"13/
SPEECHES
CALEB CUSHING.
SPEECH
DELIVERED IN
KA^NEUIt. H:A.LL, - BOSTON,
OCTOBER 27, 1857
ALSO,
SPEECH
DELIVERED. IN'
CITY HALL, - XEWBURYPOUT
OCTOBER 31, 1857
By CALEB C U S H I X G .
PRINTED AT THE OFFICE OF THE BOSTON POST.
185T.
C^s
SPEECH m FANEUIL HALL.
Fellow Citizens of the Slate of Massachusetts : —
I present myself before you, in this time and place, to discuss the
political questions of the day, at the request of the Young Men's
Democratic Association, who have been pleased to think that it was
a duty, incumbent on me, to contribvite my share of effort to the ob-
ject of securing the full exposition of the issues, presently to be
passed upon by the people of the Commonwealth.
Let me not be ashamed to confess, that, many times before as it has
happened to me to speak from this very spot, I have not been able to
look forward without solicitude to the present hour and its appointed
task. I come to it now with unaffected self-distrust. I seem, to
myself, to be awed into solemnity by the visible presence, as it were,
of the Genius of Faneuil Hall.
Besides, if I speak at all, I cannot deal in commonplace, or in
mere generalities, but must address myself to the living questions of
the crisis, such as as palpitate in the bosoms of men, and occupy the
common thought of the hustings, the workshop, the counting-room,
the street, and the fireside. To speak thus, and thus only, is a
necessity of my position not less than a point of honor.
On this account, I come to you, avowedly and visibly, with a writ-
ten address. I know, as well as any man living, I know by the prac-
tice and observation of thirty years, how much of advantage there is,
at least for momentary impression, in the fact, or the appearance if
not the fact, of extemporaneous oratory ; the impassioned manner,
the moving eye, the kindling soul within us, working, as it were,
before the very eyes of the spectator-auditor. But I know its dangers
also ; and, to avoid them, I, of set purpose, relinquish its advantages.
I will not run the risk, in the heat of the mind's action, of saying
more or less than I mean ; I will not have the opportunity of substi-
tuting after thoughts for the spoken words : respectfully soliciting of
the press the favor to abstain from any abstract or report of my re-
marks, and thus to aid me in the accomplishment of what is, in that
respect, a well meant design.
I take this course for another reason. It has come to be the opin-
ion, outside of Massachusetts, that passion and prejudice have so
possessed themselves of the mind of the State, that its inhabitants
cannot and will not listen to adverse opinions ; that freedom of speech
is here but a name ; that, notwithstanding what is continually said of
the repressive laws at the South to prevent the discussion of certain
questions there, the bigotry of party here just as effectually prevents
it in Massachusetts ; that Boston will as a matter of pride have afforded
a hearing to Senator Toombs, but which, it is alleged, is an exception
proving the rule of general exclusion, as evinced by the ann-er excited
in some quarters by the presence of Senator Mason at Eunkcr Hill ;
and that, in general, any person, who ventures to combat th( prevalent
errors of Massachusetts, will be received, not with respectful attention,
not even with indifferent silence, but Avith violence, vituperation and
personal reproach and calumniation, more especially at the hands ol
a class of persons, who profess to be the especial champions of liberty
in the United States. — Is that so ? I do not believe it.
I kitow that there was a time, when Quakers were hanged in Mas-
sachusetts, because of their very bad taste in the abuse of personal
pronouns, or for some other equally cogent reason ; that there was a
time, when Mistress Anne Hutchinson was expelled from the State
for want of orthodoxy regarding the covenant of Avorks, — which
touches me the more closely, seeing that my ancestor, John Cotton, was
infected with the same heresy, — damnable heresy, I think the phrase
then was. And the remembrance of these things has led to the im-
pression, in many parts of the United States, that there is, in the
people of Massachusetts, a sort of hereditary taint of intolerance, de-
scended to us from our forefathers of the Puritan Commonwealth.
I have in this relation particular cause of solicitude. It was the for-
tune of myself, a man of Massachusetts, during the four years which
but lately elapsed, to be one of the seven persons, whose duty it is, by
the Constitution and the laws, to administer the executive government
of the United States, under the direction, general or special, of the
President. Among the seven was another son of Massachusetts,
(Mr. Marcy,) since deceased, full of years and honors. I solemnly
aver, and pledge myself to prove, on proper occasion, that, in every
act of that Administration, there was due regard to the interests and the
honor of this Commonwealth. I repeat, in every act, treaties, tariffs,
aye, even the debated questions of the organization of the new terri-
tories. I mention, as conspicuous illustrations of this averment, the
successful conclusion of the fishery question, of the colony trade
question, and of the sound dues question, objects, all, of the utmost
importance to Massachusetts, to her interests and her honor alike ;
and which objects, for thirtj- years before, to my personal knowledge, we,
the people of Massachusetts, had been laboring in vain to accomplish
under each and every Administration of the Federal Government, and
which had baffled the efforts of John Quincy Adams and of Daniel
Webster. I say, these, and many other things of the same character,
the Administration of Franklin Pierce did ; and did, by no means be-
cause it contained in its body three men of New England, but with
the cordial co-operation, not only of the honorable, wise and upright
Campbell and McLelland, — men of the North, — but with equally cor-
dial co-operation, nay, in signal instances, the initiation, of the good
and generous Dobbin, — alas, now no m re, — of the strong-headed
and large-hearted Guthrie, and of that othu'r intellectual, high-minded,
and at the North most misunderstood and calumniated, man cf the
South, Jefferson Davis. I say, and say it proudly, to my country, to
the world, and to posterity, that these things we did, and did with the
cordial unanimity of a band of brothers ; that there was never an
act of questionable rectitude to cast so much as tlie shadow of a staia
upon ths white ermine of that Administration ; and that, in the dis-
position of the great concerns of the country, of immense public
interests, domestic and foreign, the Administration of President Pierce
deserves well of the whole people of the United States, especially
well of the people of the North, and most especially well of you, the
people of Massachusetts,
But all this, it is pretended, the people of the North and of Mas-
sachusetts have forgotten, or have chosen not to see, and have thrown
behind them in blind wrath, because of a diflcrence of opinion in the
country upon an abstract question of law, — the merest of all technical
abstractions, since of no possible effect practically one way or the
other, as I shall presently demonstrate, — and because of the oppor-
tunity, which the solution of that abstract question of law afforded to
aspiring men, in the necessary interval between the enactment of an
act of Congress and the complete execution of that act, the actual
exhibition of its nature by events, — to raise once more, and maintain
for awhile, the cry of southern domination. over the North.
Hence, the Administration of Franklin Pierce which is passed, and
that of James Buchanan which follows' it, and all concerned in either,
have been heaped with opprobrium, and the true character of their acts
has been disregarded, and their impartiality of national spirit, nay,
their direct attention to the principles and the interests of the North, has
been falsely imputed as partiality to the South, and they have been
condemned therefor, by persons, who, with similar distorted vision, at
former times, viewed ia reverse the merits of the acquisition of Loui-
siana by Jefferson, and of the declaration of war against Great Britain
by Madison.
And now, when that latest in order of the successive bubbles of sec-
tional jealousy has burst; now when, in spite of the prevision of so
many good men in the North, and I may say, — not in spite of their
wishes, for that would be unjust, — but in spite of their perverse
endeavors to prove that it must and would be otherwise, Kansas is a
free State ; — now, in the same school of aspiring public men, there is
attempt to extract from the currency troubles of the day new matter
of sectional prejudice, and thus haply to get one more touch of the lash
at the raw on the flanks of the galled jade of sectional jealousy and
hatred, and to keep her shambling and stumbling along in spasmodic
agony a little longer, and so postpone for a year or two the time of
cordial understanding, and zealous co-operation for the public good,
between the national statesmen and the people of the North and the
South, the East andlhe West.
Yes, that is the issue now on trial in Massachusetts. One of the
three parties, which contests the power of the Commonwealth against
the other two, and Avhich arrogantly assvmies to possess that power
even before the people have so decided by their suffrage, — that party
plants itself on the insulated ground of sectional jealousies ; it mounts
once again that broken-down, spavined, foundered hack of sectional
malice, hatred, and all uncharitubleness, and thus thinks to ride into
power in this Commonwealth, and from thence into the government
of the United States. That, I say, is the issue now on trial in Mas-
sachusetts, and on which I desire to speak. Will you hear me? Will
6
you concede to me that liberty of speecli, whicli is practised by others
at my expense, and which riots in -wholesale denunciation of the
Democratic party, of its measures and of its men, whether Pierce or
Buchanan occupy the post of the Presidency ?
I ask this question the more anxiously, inasmuch as I shall have to
sp^ak of men as well as things, — not merely because the adversaries of
the Democratic party do this, and do it with no pretension of reserve, —
but because there can be no frank discussion otherwise; because, in
public affairs, men personify, though they do not always represent, prin-
ciples ; and especially on the present occasion, because, of the three
candidates for the government of the State, one only, Mr. Beach, con-
tinues to be held up as the candidate of a great political party, with
its creed of doctrines, its definite present policy, its unmistakable
future position, and a national organization co-extensive with the
Republic ; while the other two, Mr. Gardner and Mr. Banks, as is
every day more and more distinctly seen, are each the head of parties,
which, owing to what they comprehend in their respective ranks as
well as what they do not comprehend, are coming to be denominated,
by common consent, one the Gardner party and the other the Banks
party, — accessions to, or desertions from, and transitions to and fro
between, these two personal parties, being so numerous, so frequent,
so sudden, and performed with so much tranquil assurance of self-
satisfied agility of circus-like saltation from one side to the other,
with such odd incidents of persons, and even respectable pubUc jour-
nals, belonging to both sides, or falling between the two and there
sitting helplessly in the disconsolate but most comical yj.r of incurable
bewilderment and despair, — that the curious spectator knows not
whether to laugh or to weep over the humiliating spectacle of the
abyss of disgrace, into which fanatical sectionalism of policy has
plunged the dear, good, puzzled old Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
I say that the parties opposed to the Democratic party are so personal,
that, in speaking of them, one cannot discuss things without alluding
to men. That is particularly impossible in regard to the American-
Republican party, as at the start I think it called itself, but from
which the Americans have declared off to nominate Mr. Gardner, and
the Republicans to nominate Mr. Swan.
But indeed I have no purpose to say a word to the prejudice of
either Mr. Gardner or Mr. Banks, except as involved in the temperate
and courteous discussion of the great issues of the canvass, and more
especially the doctrines of the Republicans in their relation to the
peace and well-being of Massachusetts, and of the United States.
It has been my fortune to be associated with Mr. Gardner and Mr.
Banks in the legislature of Massachusetts, — with Mr. Banks, also, in .
our diverse paths of public duty at Washington, — and with each in
social and personal intercourse. I respect and esteem them, and shall
not be unfaithful to that sentiment. With Mr. Banks especially,
of whose present line of policy I shall have much to say, I would, if
our political relations permitted, reason not as an adversary but as a
friend.
I shall speak, in fine, the solemn convictions of my judgment, not
only in presence of you, my fellow citizens, and of my own conscience,
but in that of my country and my God.
There is no presumption in saying that the winged words, uttered
here this day, will fly beyond the limits of Massachusetts, — not be-
cause of him who utters them, but because uttered in Faneuil Hall. It
is Faneuil Hall which speaks, — Faneuil Hall, whose voices are as of the
Archangel in mid-heaven, and the echoes of which reverberate from
its time-honored vault over earth and ocean like the rolling thunder
of a summer eve. For whatever of earnest conviction, embodied in
earnest speech, is favored enough^ to occupy this echo-point of the
Commonwealth, that is propagated from hence throughout the Union,
to be pondered and judged by thoughtful men, as well on the placers
of California and the prairies of Texas and Minnesota, as in the cities
and farm-houses of Massachusetts.
I begin with saying all, that the occasion calls on me to say,
respecting the position of the actual Governor of the Commonwealth.
In the first place, I cannot concur with Mr. Gardner and his friends
in apprehension of danger to the public liberties from European emi-
gration to the United States,' and, least of all, from the emigration of
the men of those superior races, Teutonic and Celtic, the combination
of which, and not the exclusion of either, is the secret of the loftiness
in the scale of nations of Great Britain and the United States.
In the second place, I cannot conceive how it is possible that gen-
tlemen, who, in the intensity of their patriotic Americanism, object to
the Germans and Irish, — nephe^Vs of our fathers, blood cousins of our-
selves,— being admitted to equality of political right with us, should
be solicitous to confer that equality on Africans. Surely the inconve-
niences, to which any white man of the industrial classes of Massachu-
setts may be subjected, by the influx of white men from Europe, is
but as nothing, compared with what he would sufier by the influx of
runaway or of emanciiiated black men from Virginia or Kentucky.
And surely, also, he, who, induced by considerations of personal senti-
ment or political theory, repels the citizen-equality of white Europeans,
men of our own race, color and kindred, will not seriously maintain
either the sentiment or the political theory of admissible citizen-
equality for the most alien of all the possible forms of alienage, black
men of Africa.
In the third place, — and this appears to have been strangely over-
looked,— the question of citizenship, or of votership so to speak, in
the State of Massachusetts, is wholly independent of the question of
citizenship in the United States. Women and children all around us
are citizens of the United States ; but they are absolutely excluded
from political power by the constitution of Massachusetts. On the
other hand, aliens by thousands, men who have merely made the pre-
paratory declaration of their purpose hereafter to become citizens of
the United States, are, nevertheless, voters, according to express
provision of the constitutions of several of the States ; such, for
example, as Michigan and Wisconsin.
Forgetfulness or disregard of these facts, by the way, is at the
bottom of much of the misconception current concerning the case of
Dred Scott. Any State of the Union, which chooses, can make him
and others of his class its citizens and its voters ; for the question, who
shall be voters in the several States, even for Members of Congress
and for Electors of President, is left, by the Constitution of the United
8
States, to be determined by each State for itself. But no State can
decide who shall be competent to sue in the courts of the United
States.
In the fourth place, I object to any discrimination between citizens
of the United States on the score of religion. It is the right of every
man here to worship God according to his own conscience, whether
he be Protestant or Catholic, Jew or Gentile.
Finally, the fundamental thought of Americanism is, by its very
nature, confined in its political relation to the legislation of individual
States, and cannot constitutionally reach that of the United States,
except as respects the District of Columbia, or some one of the future
new Territories. It is analogous, in this point of view, to the anti-
masonic question, and, like all other single ideas in government,
incapable of perpetuity of party organization. It will attain its single
legislative object, and then, of course, no longer have cau^e to act; or
it will find the attainment of that object impracticable, and then, of
necessity, cease to act. Thus, it is of local importance only, in this
or that State for instance, and without, in itself, potentiality of influ-
ence, in my judgment, either for good or evil, on the general welfare
of the Union.
When, therefore, a large body of most respectable persons, of what
was once the Whig party, not American by opinion or association,
had concluded to vote for Mr. Gardner, and one of the worthiest
among them, Mr. Hillard, appeared in this hall to avow and justify
their conclusion, it was easy to foresee that any such justification must
repose on personal grounds, or grounds of expediency, not of political
principle.
First, Mr. Hillard recognizes the wise independence of sundry ex-
ecutive acts 06 Governor Gardner, — acts, which do indeed entitle him
to the commendation of his fellow citizens. But Mr. Hillard also
recognizes, with honorable approbation, the wdsdom displayed in legis-
lative acts of Mr. Beach. So that, on personal considerations, the
conclusion from these premises might as v.^ell have been for Mr. Beach
as for j\Ir. Gardner.
Secondly, Llr. Hillard, conceiving that the election of Mr. Banks,
especially, would be prejudicial to the interests of the State and the
Union, and assuming that Mr. Gardner has better chances of success
than Mr. Be'ach, therefore concludes for Mr. Gardner. I do not con-
cede the second branch of the gentleman's premises. I would not
have anticipated the conclusion. I should have looked to that gen-
tleman, and those with whom he acts, to sui)port, not the seemingly
stronger party, but the best party, and then to so act as to make that
the strongest; to disregard the question of conjectural availability in
the face of doctrine ; to say, if need be,
Victrix causa diis placuit, sed vita Catoni ; • «.
and, if new party associations were to be formed, if in search of a
party as Mr. Hillard professes, to join at once the great Democratic
party, that only party, no\v in the field, which possesses the vitality of
a national'and constitutional organization : — seeing the truth of the
resolution adopted by the Democratic State Convention, to the efi'cct
that " Since the practical dissolution of the Whig party in the United
States, and by reason of the dedication of other parties each to some
one narrow and impracticable idea, the Deniocrulic party, and that
only, retains the character and qualities of a constitutional, national
and patriotic association of citizens ; and is alone capable of preserv-
ing the public peace at home and abroad, administering the great
interests of the country, and sustaining the integrity of the Consti-
tution and the Union."
But they have thought otherwise, as it was their right to do. We
may regret, we cannot complain at, their decision. And, if they are
not prepared for that conclusion, towards which the whole country is
apparently now tending, — namely, to stand on the broad and firm
platform of the Democratic party, — we may yet rejoice to find that
they concur with us in resolute opposition to sectional animosity,
jealousy and agitation, and that the Whigs of Massachusetts are
manfully and expressly committed to the great cause of the Union.
I come now to the questions connected with the candidature of Mr.
Banks.
Fellow citizens, we all know there is a body of persons in this
Commonwealth who devote themselves to the idea of raising the black
men in the United States to an equality of political rights with the
white men. They are professional philanthropists, if the phrase be
admissible, — that is, men who pursue a philanthropic idea as their
main occupation, but wholly outside of political life; laboring to pro-
mote their idea by speech and writing, or by itinerant agitation, that
is, indirectly, by influence on the minds of those who legislate, or
who execute laws, not by direct participation of their own in. legisla-
tion or administration. Of course, not co-operating with others in
the practical business of government, they are very much one-sided,
dogmatic, violent in their language, and not sparing of personal crimi-
nation and denunciation of all the rest of the world, and especially of
any others in society, who, differing from them either much or little,
happen to be conspicuous in public affairs, or directly responsible for
the Itegislation of the State or the United States. In a word, they
are impracticable zealots of a single idea.
That among them are men of eminently intellectu-al character, it
would be absurd to deny. Such an one as Mr. Theodore Parker.
That among them are eloquent persons also, it must be admitted, like
Mr. Wendell Phillips, although he injures his cause, and belittles
himself, by the petulant personal vituperation, which too frequently
disfigures his discourse. They have strong-purposed men, also, such
as Mr. Garrison, of the structure of mind, which grasps an idea, and
labors on through good and thrjugh evil report to make that idea
a fact.
These gentlemen have persuaded themselves that the emancipation
of the slave laborers in the United States is an object paramount to
all other human considerations. They know they have no legal
capacity to act directly in the question. They perceive that the
Bible is contrary to, or, at least, does not distinctly teach, their doc-
trines, and therefore they make no account of that. They are aware
that the Constitution of the United States stands in their path, and
therefore they would dissolve the Union. I believe Mr. Phillips is, or
recently was, conventionizing, so to speak, on that project. In a word.
10
they are enthusiasts of opinion, who would be cfRcacious agents of
revolution, if living in a country where revolution is possible, and if
their theories were susceptible of practical application to any machinery
of government whatever.
I desire not to be understood as speaking of these gentlemen with
personal disrespect. On the contrary, they seem to deserve the
tribute of sincerity, at least ; for, without they be sincere, how could
it be that they would outlaw themselves, as it were, by their impar-
tial hostility to all the political parties of the country, and by their
avowed, nay, ostentatious, warfare on the Constitution and the Union ?
These gentlemen assume as theory, and seek to establish as law,
the equality of Africans and Americans. It avails nothing to say to
I them that the two races are unequal by nature, and that no laws can
make them equal in fact. Still, the zealots pursue their idea.
' Of course, they aim to bring about the emancipation of the colored
laborers of the South. And here it avails nothing to point to St.
Domingo, and to Spanish America, and to the British West Indies,
. and to show that emancipation has proved a curse to the black and
to the white race alike, and that anarchy, barbarism and misery have
followed it everywhere, even in the most favored regions of the New
World. Still they pursue their idea of emancipation in the United
States.
To accomplish this, or at least to free themselves from association
with slave labor, and as the only political means of attaining this
object, they propose the dissolution of the Union, and the organiza-
tion of a Northern Republic. We may tell them that such a Repub-
lic is impossible ; that the attempt to organize it would be the signal
of civil war, not between the North and South, but in the very
heart of the North, with such of us as will contend in arms, on the
spot, against any attempt to organize their separate Republic ; that
if such a Republic existed, it could not advance their, purpose without
they invaded the South with hostile armies ; that the Middle States
stand in the way of that ; and, after all, that, to kindle the flames of civil
and servile war in the United States, appears to be rather questiona-
ble philanthropy. Still, we cannot move them from their purpose.
I think it is at the end of this scries of considerations, that Ave are to
find the fact of the peculiar tone and style of resentfulness, anger and
measureless denunciation of the Southern States, and of bitterness
toAvards men at the North, which marks the speech and writing of the
Emancipationists. They attack fiercely, and they are attacked. Their
idea is one of revolutionary change in the condition of the country, and
it is condemned by others as warmly as it is urged by themselves. They
it disturb and prejudice important interests. Their political ardor has,
at length, become aggravated by something of theological ardor,
which is of proverbial intensity. And thus a state of feeling has
been produced in the community, which, commencing with mere con-
demnation of negro-servitude, and desire of its abolition, has degen-
erated, in some quarters, into emotions of morbid jealousy and even
hatred of the people of the Southern States.
And that is the state of feeling and emotion in the North, and
especially in Massachusetts, which aspiring public men seize upon,
11
and seek to combine and consolidate, as an instrument of political
power, by the newly applied name of Republicanism.
I say aspiring men, not in the sense of reproach, but as a fact.
Such men as Governor Chase, of Ohio, — Senator Seward of New York,
— Senator Fessenden, of Maine, — Senator Hale, of New Hampshire, —
Senator Trumbull, of Illinois, — have the right of political aspiration,
which belongs to their virtues and their talents. So have Senators
Sumner and Wilson, of jMassachusetts, although, as between the two,
Mr. Sumner is more of a theorist, like the Emancipationists proper, and
Mr. Wilson has more of the qualities and capabilities of a practical
legislator. And so also has Mr. Banks the right of aspiration, which
the possession of talents and acquirements gives to him, as to any
and every citizen of the Republic.
Now, it is obvious to see that Mr. Banks, unlike the Emancipationists,
looks to the seats of power as the means of acting on the events of
the time, acquiring fame, and obtaining his niche in history. Unlike
the Emancipationists, he rejects the part of a mere professional agitator
on the outskirts of public affairs. Unlike the Emancipationists, he is a
practical man, not a visionary theorist ; he sees, clearly, the imprac-
ticable nature of their ideas ; he does not mean to be outlawed, in
the estimation of his countrymen, by running a quixotic^ tilt against
the Constitution of the United States ; on the contrary, he certainly
prefers to have the Federal Government subsist in its integrity, with
himself to participate in its administration.
Hence, it is the well considered policy of Mr. Banks, and of those
with whom he is at present associated in political action, — perhaps, I
might say it is the necessity of their position, — whilst holding aloof
from visible co-operation with the Emancipationists, — whilst in fact
rejecting and condemning their aims and plans, — yet to exploit, as
the phrase is in France, the sentiments sown by the Emancipationists
in the community, and so to mount up to power. ^
Thus it has happened that the Republicans, and before them the
Free Soilers, have made their issues, not on the slavery question itself, f
but on some occasional and transitory incident of the slavery question, '■
for which reason they have been, and will continue to be, beaten suc-
cessively on each one of their issues, so as to produce the appearance,
if not the fact, of a positive reaction in favor of slavery, and against
liberty, analogous to that which has occurred simultaneously in
Europe.
I need only point, in proof of this, to the annexion of Texas, the
Mexican war, the compromise acts of ISJO, and the provisions of the act
organizing the Territories of Nebraska and Kansas, — neither of them
deciding any substantive thing on the subject of slavery, but each
made to appear to do so, on account of the improvident issues raised
xipon them by a portion of the statesmen of the North.
Owing to these causes, although none of the statesmen referred to '
lend direct countenance to the wild schemes of mere Emancipationism,
still, it may be doubted whether their line of action is not the cause
of even greater perturbation of the public peace. The power of
Emancipationism is paralyzed, for evil as well as for good, by its
recognized antagonism to the Constitution. But when statesmen
unpatriotically play with the passions of Emancipationism, and thus
i
12
impart to it force in the public mind, and come at length, insensibly,
to be imbued Avith its sentiments, as well as to speak its language,
then the current of legislation and of public affairs is disturbed by
them, and positive injury is done to the best interests of the Union.
We have had exemplification of this in the controversy, which is
just dying out, as to the organization of the Territory of Kansas.
By a provision of an act of Congress, connected with the admission
of the State of Missouri into the Union, and commonly called the
Missouri Compromise, it was enacted that there should never be
involuntary servitude in certain territory of United States north of a
prescribed parallel of latitude (36'^ 30'). It of course admitted,
and did in fact, according to the established rules of statutory con-
struction, impliedly sanction by law, slavery south of that line. It
in effect said — there may hereafter be slave labor south of the line,
there shall not north of it. That was the compromise. On this
ground it was opposed by some statesmen at the North, who desired
to propagate free labor south of the line at the expense of the Southern
States ; and it was approved, and its extension to new territories
advocated, by others, as a measure of equal justice to the opinions of
both sections of the Union.
In this position things stood, until, in a series of decisions of the
Supreme Court of the United States, it was determined that acts of
Congress of this nature, restricting in advance the legislative power
of a State, as to slavery or any thing else, are null and void, because
contrary to the Constitution.
Thus it happened that, when the time arrived for establishing the
Territory of Kansas, the Missouri Compromise had become a dead
letter on the statute book. It had ceased to have legal vigor. Con-
gress had no constitutional power to revive it by new enactment.
To repeal it expressly, was not an act of necessity, but of sincerity,
of good faith, of frankness, of manliness ; and it was done. Still,
the express repeal changed nothing in the legal relations of the sub-
ject; it did but leave the question of slavery, in the incipient State,
just where by the decisions of the Supreme Court it was placed, that
is, in the hands of its people. That is the doctrine, not of squatter
sovereignty, but of popular sovereignty within the range of the limits
of the Constitution.
Wc assume all the time, in our discussion of the slavery question
at the North, that free labor is more productive than slave labor ; that
it communicates more value to land ; that it is more consonant with
the nature of man ;-that it alone is moral and religious ; and that the
settled judgment of mankind is opposed to slave labor on principle.
Assuming all this, it might be inferred that a new political community,
with full power to judge for itself on the question, would exclude
slave labor from its institutions. Especially might we so infer, if the
new community consis^ted of men of the Northern States. In other
words, it was perfectly clear that, however it might be if Kansas were
colonized from the Southern States, yet, if colonized from the Northern
States, it would certainly be a free labor State. Its condition would
depend on the source of its colonization.
Moreover, the line of the Missouri Compromise, as a line of division
between free labor and slave labor States, ceasing to exist, it was
13
perfectly clear that its obliteration would have the effect to open the
whole rcn;ion to the free competition of the two principles, and the
result would be to extend slave labor, or to extend free labor, accord-
ino- to the respective capabilities of colonization of the two adverse
principles, and of the States which they represent. _ _ ^
Now, in such an open competition and free race of colonization. I
which was likely to succeed, — the slave labor or the free labor States?
I say, the latter, undeniably; as having the greater _ population in '
number, population more easily moved, and population backed by
emigration from Europe.
For instance, suppose twO adjoining closes. Black Acre and White
Acre, each of the same number of roods in extent, arid separated by
a division fence, with two hundred black sheep in Black Acre and
three hundred white sheep in White Acre. If, now, we break down
the division fence, and make common pasturage of the two closes,
and leave the sheep to take care of themselves, which will get the
most feed out of the whole, which will occupy most of it, which will
encroach on ihe other, — the three hundred white sheep or the two
hundred black sheep? Is not the answer palpable, self-evident, im-
possible to escape ? Is there any answer but one ? And that is the
question and answer of free labor extension or slave labor extension
by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise.
In disregard of these manifest considerations, it \vas prematurely
and hastily assumed, by certain of the statesmen of the North in the
Senate, and they inconsiderately propagated the idea, that, to leave
the new Territory of Kansas open to the free competition of the two
principles, was to extend slavery ; in other words they assumed, that,
in all new territory, whatever the soil and climate, and under what-
ever circumstances, if the people were left free to act for themselves,
they would of course introduce slave Libor ; and that, therefore, the
only salvation of the country consisted in tying the people's hands,
in this respect, by act of Congress. Hence the irritating, but sterile,
agitation on the subject of Kansas.
The same gentlemen also propagated the idea that to repeal the
Missouri Compromise was a breach of faith. But the power and the
right, of any Congress, to repeal acts of general legislation, of any
previous Congress, are so apparent, — it is so obviously absurd to put
an act of Congress above the Constitution itself, — it is so contrary to
all the principles of republican government, to deny the moral right
of the community to change its laws, — that the imputation of br.each
of faith, in the repeal, passed speedily into merited oblivion.
Such, in my humble judgment, are the merits of this greatly vexed
question. That there have been disorders in Kansas, illegal voting,
acts of individual violence, — is true ; it was to have been expected
from the circumstances ; not merely by reason of particular causes of
disorder, which it would be invidious, and is not necessary to my pur-
pose, now to mention, — but, for the general cause, that here was a sort
of proclaimed steeple-chase, with much irritating demonstration on
both sides, bet\veen the Northern and the Southern States, for the
colonization of Kansas. It was a struggle for power between adven-
turers in the Territory ; it was a struggle for ascendancy between two
conflicting theories of social institution ; and it was a struggle of
u
pride between opposite sections of the Union. Of course, there were
disorders ; no human power could prevent that ; President Pierce did
every thinsj, to that end, which could constitutionally be done. But
the magnitude of those disorders has been greatly exaggerated for
effect. They have been much less in degree, less in political import-
ance and effect, and less in the sacrifice of life, than those, which have,
during the same period, taken place under our eyes in the State of
Maryland, without exciting special wonder there, or being deemed
worthy to be used as the instrument of pulling down, or putting
ujj, administrations of the Federal Government.
Behind all these things in Kansas, and one of the operative causes
of the exaggerated importance given to political controversy there,
has been a great land-speculation. The inflamed zeal of the whole
country on the slavery qiiestion, — the discussipn of Kansas in Con-
gress, and in the State Legislatures, — the making the election of
President to turn upon it, — corporations, committees and subscriptions,
North and South, in aid of Kansas, — all these constituted such an
advertising, such a puff after the manner of Barnum, of the lands of
that Territory, as no previous land or other speculation in the United
States had ever enjoyed.
In confirmation of my own conclusion on the subject, let me quote
from a recent published address of a most unimpeachable witness, — I
mean Mr. Etheridge of Tennessee, well known and highly commended
at the North, for his course on the Kansas Nebraska Bill, and in regard
to the slave trade. Mr. Etheridge declares, in so many words, that
Kansas, as connected with the slavery question, was a humhug ; that
he never saw half a dozen intelligent Southern men who believed it
would or coiild be a slave State; and that, as to it, speculation in the
public land had been, from the beginning, the main object of attraction,
North and South.
I have not time, and it M-ould be out of place, to reply here to the
many misrepresentations, in the matter of Kansas, which have been
applied to the acts of the last and of the present Administrations.
There is one point, however, which is interesting, and of immediate
importance.
Much has been said of the boguslaws of Kansas, as the enactments
of its Territorial Assembly are elegantly denominated in the choice
phraseology of the day. The Republicans in Congress have uttered
volumes of lamentation over these hogus laAvs, alleging that they
were not genuine or obligatory, because of imputed irregularities and
intruded votes at the election of the members of the Assembly. The
refusal of the Republicans of Kansas to do any act under these laws,
for more than a year, has been the chief immediate cause of disorder
in the Territory. The professors of New Haven, with singular igno-
rance of public law and common right, have been contending, not
only that the existence of these laws was good cause of revolution,
but that the President of the United States, the mere administrator
of constitution and law, was bound to patronize the revolution. Mr.
Buchanan has disposed of that new^ chemical compound of theology
and laAv.
Meanwhile, our fellow citizen. Senator Wilson, naturally anxious
about his agitation-stock in Kansas, lately visited the Territory. He
15
well knew tliat the agitation there was a hogus agitation, and he had
the sense to see clearly that the cry of hogus laws was untenable, and,
if persisted in, would but defeat his own friends. Accordingly, hogus
laws to the contrary notwithstanding, he, as himself tells us in a re-
cent speech, advised the Republicans of Kansas to go quietly to ,the
polls and vote, under the hogus laws, — with a. protest, as one pays
unwilling duties at the Custom House. They did so ; and Kansas is
a free State. It would have saved the country some trouble, if Sena-
tor Wilson, or any other man of equal common sense, had thought of
this protest some time ago, and had at an earlier period counselled
the people of Kansas to cease playing the fool, and to cease to do so
under protest, if they chose.
I ventured, on a fit occasion not long since, to suggest that our
political troubles, in the United States, are not quite so serious as
those of some other countries ; and that, in view of the horrors per-
petrated in British India, it is almost impious for us to be so very
miserable about our little frontier affairs in Kansas or Utah. I
thought this was not only true, but a truism. Yet the suggestion has
drawn from a respectable journal in Boston, and also from Mr. Bur-
lingame, at the hustings, some very affecting remarks concerning my
hard-heartedness, — my want of charity for the sufferings of bleeding
Kansas.
Now, Senator Wilson, in the speech just quoted, says that he
promised, when in Kansas, to raise for them three or four tliousand
dollars, on hi« return to Massachusetts. But, he says, he has not
been able to do this. Nay, he has canvassed Connecticut and New
York to the same end ; and all New England, with New York besides,
would not contribute three or four thousand dollars for bleeding
Kansas. Senator Wilson was not, like our friend Mr. Hillard, in
search of a party ; that he had already, although it was in rather a
shaky condition, as the recent popular demonstrations in Pennsyl-
vania, Ohio and elsewhere show ; but he was in search of a man with
a heart, — to quote the expressive language of Mr. Burlingame. That
man could not be found. So it appears that I am not alone in hard-
heartedness. All New England, and New York, too, exhibit the
same sort of hardness of heart towards bleeding Kansas.
Nay, we have now the speech of Gerrit Smith, — a soft-hearted man
in these matters, if there ever was one, — nay, a truly generous-minded,
as well as very wrong-headed, gentleman, Mr. Smith tells us that
he has been hied for Kansas, to his heart's content ; that he has paid
thousands of dollars on that score, without knowing what has become
of it, or perceiving that it has done any good ; and that he is resolved
to cease to bleed for bleeding Kansas.
On the whole, therefore, I feel consoled, and shall adhere to my
original belief, that the troubles in Kansas are not half so grave as
the troubles in British India. Nay, I shall come to the conclusipn,
under shelter of the personal experience of Mr. Gerrit Smith, ami
the failure of Senator Wilson to raise four thousand dollars for Kansas
in New York, and all New England, that there may be good people
in Massachusetts, needing my charity much more than the Borrio-
boola-eha of Kansas.
16
My fellow citizens, that "Morgan" is used up, it will not even
keep good " until after election."
The same fate has overtaken the dreadful case of Dred Scott. It
was deemed so hard to have it decided that he was not a citizen of
the United States. Lawyers forgot that so it had been decided, and
uniformly understoojj. and practised, long ago, in the administration
of the Government. Good men forgot that the case of the Indians
was the same, and even harder ; for they, at any rate, are native-born
Americans by an older and batter title than the Africans. But there
remained to Dred Scott, and the men of his color, as we have already
seen, the warm sympathy and support of the free-labor States. They
could compensate, if not correct, the cruelty of the Supreme Court,
by their own well administered tenderness ; they could declare Afri-
cans to be citizens of their own, and invest them with the elective
franchise, — a much more important privilege than that of being a
suitor in the District or Circuit Court. Have they done this ? By
no manner of means. On the contrary, since then, the free State of
Minnesota has excluded blacks from citizenship ; the free State
of Iowa has done the same ; and, most cruel stab of all, — not from
"the envious Casca," but from thee, Brutus, — the Topeka Constitu-
tion'of Kansas, the embodiment of Republican philosophy and Re-
publican philanthropy, not content with disfranchising the Africans,
had actually expelled them from the State.
I supposed, after this, we should hear no more of Dred Scott. It
seems, however, that the main point of his case is still misunderstood,
namely, the relation of the decision to the free States. As to that,
suffice it to say, that the opinion of the Chief Justice, and especially
that of Justice Nelson, have for their legal effect, not to impose the
laws of Missouri on Massachusetts, but to determine absolutely, in
consonance with all theory of public right and of liberty, that Mis-
souri, like Massachusetts, has the sole constitutional power to deter-
mine the legal condition of persons within the State.
Fellow citizens, you thus perceive that there has been a complete
break-down of these elaborately constructed platforms of discord,
upon which, for the last two or three years, the Republicans have
agitated the United States. The time had come when a new issue
must be sought. And the present financial crisis of the country has
been dashed at, as affording such an issue. Mr. Banks presents him-
self before you, and stakes his election on the endeavor to convert, or
pervert, the embarrassments of our credit system into a negro
question, and thus to throw a new stumbling block of offense between
the Northern and Southern States. It is true Mr. Banks is quite
oracular on these points, — with much indefiniteness of language and
want of intelligible correlation of ideas, and with dark intimations,
quite as fit to be announced, to willing believers, as the equivocal
voices of Delphi or Dodona. But we shall be able, with careful
attention, to find the key of these apparent mysteries.
Mr- Banks, in his speech here, discusses, professedly, the currency
question, and has three topics of what purports to be suggestion of cause
for the financial embarrassments of the country, but which is, in fact,
elaborate accusation of the late Executive of the United States in the
first instance, and then, beyond that, of the South, — in the aim of
17
stimulating at the North emotions of hatred against the South.
These topics are the tariff, the public lands, and the expenses of the
Government.
First, as to the tariff, Mr- Banks says : —
" I do not hesitate to say that, if the policy advocated by Mr. Guthrie in 1853
had been adopted in I800, the present condition of the country Avould not have
been witnessed, nor the present suffering experienced."
Then again, making the statement more specific, he says : —
" At the very last moment of an expiring Congress, such a change was made in
the revenue laws, as would have relieved the country from the perils which now
exist, had it been made a year, or even six months earlier."
First it is two years, then one year, and finally six months, of delay
in acting on certain recommendations of Mr. Guthrie, which is the
cause of the evil.
How did this delay of six months, in the enactment of certain
changes of the tariff, produce the failure of the Ohio Life and Trust
Comp my, the panic of the banks of Ne%v York, so plainly shown by
Mr. Apideton, and the insolvency of the Erie Railroad, or the Illinois
Central Railroad? That is what one is curious to know\
Locking up and dow'n through more than two columns of the re-
ported speech, where it professes to explain this, the only thing, of
any conceivable relation of premises to the conclusion, is the state-
ment that the duties not sooner taken off occasioned an additional
charge on the country of eight millions per annum, with its consequent
accumulation of specie in the treasury.
No\v, as six months are but half a year, and the half of eight mil-
lions is four millions, it follows, according to Mr. Banks, that the
distribution of this amount in the totality of the business of the
country produced all our disasters. Not a single day's transactions
of this city, — less than one six-hundredth part of the annual product
of lab.)r of the country, — but one five-hundredth part of its agricul-
tural production, and one three hundred and seventy-fifth part of its
manufacturing production, assuming for the purpose the very figures
of Mr. Banks. And we are solemnly told that, but for these six
months' delay of Confess to take the advice of Mr. Guthrie in the
matter, there would have been no trouble. Is this suggestion a grave
assertion, or a mistimed pleasantry, like the jests of the imperial
Tribune at the sorrows of Rome ?
Then, says Mr. Banks, this delay, of such fatal consequences, was
the act of President Pierce. How? Let us hear Mr. Speaker.
He says : —
"The Government in the first instance supported that policy. Mr. Guthrie
never faltered. Every year for four years he repeated his "views witii increasing
strength, as an honest man should. But the Piesident was a man from another
section of the country. He did what Presidents will sometimes do. He came
down at tlie bidding of a superior power."
Here is an assertion that the Secretary of the Treasury, like an
honest man, adhered to the early avowed policy of the Administration,
but that General Pierce, its head, did not; and Mr. Banks leaves it
to be infeircd, but does not venture to say, that the imputed change
2
18 ■'\,
of thought on the part of the President caused the delay of six months'
action in Congress.
What is the proof of this imputed change of policy on the part of
the President ? Mr. Banks alleges no argument of proof, except the
allegation that, in one of his four annual messages to Congress, he
omitted to re-urge on that body, in repetition of previous messages,
consideration of Mr. Guthrie's plans ; and that, in another, he expressed
disapprobation of the views of JNIr. Guthrie.
If the President had so omitted, in one of his messages, to renew a
previous recommendation, it would have proved nothing. Congress
always delays, from year to year, on all subjects of general legislation ;
and each President has to recommend his measures over and over
again ; and it is always a matter of delicacy on the part of a President
to decide how far he may, without obstruction of his own wishes,
assimie to importune and jiress the action of Congress.
But, in the present matter. President Pierce did not yield to such
apprehensions. Mr. Banks is totally and lamentably mistaken as to
his supposed premises of fact. I might say that of my own knowledge.
I prefer to stand on the documents. There is each of the annual
messages of President Pierce to testify for itself, — that of 1853, of
1854, of 1855, of 1856, — in each one, successively,'he, in the most
unequivocal and positive language, iterates and reiterates to Congress
recommendation of attention to the views of Mr. Guthrie.
" In his second message, that of 1 854, he (President Pierce) makes no specific
allusion to the subject of the tariff."
So says Mr. Banks. The statement is a mere mistake of oversight
or misinformation. In the message of 1854 President Pierce expressly
renetos, with explanatory statistical comment, and at considerable
length, those recommendations of the message of 1853, which Mr.
Banks, at the start, admits to have been correct in themselves, as well
as conformable to the wise views of ]Mr. Guthrie.
So, also, Mr. Banks is mistaken, when he says that the expressions,
which he quotes from President Pierce's message of 1855, are in con-
tradiction of Mr. Guthrie's views. On the contrary, the same idea is
expressed in the reports of Mr, Guthrie.
in the same connection Mr. Banks says, in order to sharpen the
point of reproach against the Presideirt : —
" I say, fellow citizens, that the clearest and safest course for the Government of
the United States is in favor of amicable relatiojis with such neighbors as we have
on the North and the South. And it was this very idea, which M'as shadowed
forth in the proposition of Mr. Guthrie at the commencement of the late Adminis-
tration (1853). But, as I have said, it ivas defeated."
And Mr. Banks then proceeds to explain what he means by defeated,
in one of the passages above quoted, to be the alleged coming down
of the President on the subject of the tariff. To that I have already
replied. But how the delay of Congress for six months, or for three
years, to pass Mr. Guthrie's tariff, — and whether that delay was
justly imputable to the President or not, — had any thing to do with
the true policy of the Government, which is, according to Mr. Banks,
" to favor amicable relations with such neighbors as we have on the
19
North and the South,'" he does not satisflictoiily exphiin. The idea
suggests some singuhir queries or doubts.
'^' Amicable rehxtions with such neighbors as we have on the North
and South ! '' Who are these neighbors ? Our own countrymen ?
Oh, no ! We are not to have amicable relations with them ! It is
the' pervading thought of the speech of Mr. Banks, it seems to be the
reverie by day, and the dream by night, of himself, and those with
whom he acts, to destroy forever all amicable relations between fellow
citizen neighbors of the North and South. It is of neighboring nations
or colonies, undoubtedly, that he speaks.
What neighboring nations and colonies ? " At the North and
South," he says. Well, we have none at the North except the British
Provinces. Of course, according to Mr. Banks, the true policy of the
country, and the original thought of the Administration, in so far as
regards the British Provinces, — " amicable relations," — was defeated
by the President's desertion of Mr. Guthrie in the nick of time.
Fellow citizens, do we indeed live in a country of speech and of the
press, when the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United
States, havino- made at Washington such marvellous discoveries as
this, comes with solemn air to announce them in Faneuil Hall to the
good people of Boston? "Amicable relations" with the British
Provinces to wait for the tariff amendments of the last session of the
last Congress ! Such " amicable relations," defeated by the changed
policy of President Pierce ! Why, who, man, woman, or child, in
IMassachusetts, does not know that these amicable relations Avere
deliberately arranged and thoroughly established by the treaty with
Great Britain, negotiated and signed by Mr. Marcy, under the official
and personal superintendence of President Pierce ? And Mr. Banks
forgets this, — assumes erroneously that the measure was a legislative
one, and defeated, meaning postponed six months, — because, forsooth,
President Pierce, "at the bidding of a superior power" failed '' to
favor amicable relations " with such neighbors as we have on the
North.
But then, according to Mr. Banks, " at the bidding of a superior
power," President Pierce also omitted, at the same time, " to form
amicable relations with such neighbors," as we have " on the South,"
as well as with sucll as we have on "the North." Who were such
neighbors as we have on the South, whom, according to Mr, Banks,
President Pierce ought to have favored, persistently ftivored, but did
not? Not our own countrymen at the South, it is clear; for they
are slaveholders, and ought to have no "favor "from any person,
President though he be of the whole United States. Then, who
comes next as our neighbor on the South ? Cuba? What ! Intole-
rant as we are, in ]\Iassachusetts, of slavery in Virginia or Louisiana,
to the degree of absolutely hating, on that account, one-half of the
United States, are we nevertheless to. take to our affections the
sinners of Cuba, and receive from them the wages of sin, which we
cannot endure in Alabama and Louisiana ?
But, " amicable relations with such neigldwrs as we have on the
South!" Our only neighbor nation on the South is Mexico. How
were " amicable relations " Avith Mexico to be affected by a delay of
six months, more or less, in the proposed modification of the tariff^
20
Mr. Banks docs not explain, nor can he. There is no definite idea
bel Jnd his words. All that could be done " to favor amicable rela-
tions " with Mexico was done by President Pierce, and done effectu-
ally. Such relations were not interrupted for a moment, during the
last Administration. Nay, the most constant efforts were made by
the Administration, and its successive ministers, to establish a cus-
toms-union between the United States and Mexico. But, alas for
Mexico, she is perishing from the evil effects of the inconsiderate
emancipation of her Indians and Africans ! Nothing can be done
Avith her, except for money ; — cash in hand, to the very masters of
the silver mines of La Luz and Real del Monte, is the only means by
which to treat with Mexico ; and the Government hesitated to buy of
her. as we might have done, a treaty of commerce, and a possessory
mortgage to boot on half her territory. So much for the imputation
of defeating amicable relations with such neighbors as we have on the
North and the South.
But, again, why urge on the United States "amicable relations '"
only with such neighbors as we have on the North and the South ?
Would Mr. Banks exclude amicable relations with the East and the
West? With England, France, Germany, Italy, in the East? With
China, India, Peru, Australia, on our West ? It would seem so. Or,
if not, we must regard the whole expression as a mere phrase of
speech, not possessed of any very clear significancy even in the mind
of Mr. Banks,
But whether he had in the statement of his premises a distinct idea
of their force or not, — and erroneous as we have seen them to be, in
any possible construction of his language, — still, he draws from them
inferences of accusation against President Pierce. Unjust we have
shown these to be. Let us now scan their inducement and object.
That, indeed, is presented by Mr. Banks in language sufficiently
explicit and intelligible. It is the imputation that President Pierce
obstructed the views of Mr. Guthrie from complaisance to the South,
and that the South required it from him, out of its hatred of the
North : — all which is argument to the North to hate and fear the
South.
I have shown that the assumed fundamental fact of this argument
of sectional hostility is not true, and thus the sujDcrstructure falls to
the ground. But is it not singular that Mr. Banks should thus en-
deavor to extract suggestions, of such a nature, out of the alleged
six months' delay of jSIr. Guthrie's project, when, after all, the project
succeeded, — when it was the initiation of a man of the South, — when
its success was dftie to the unwearied exertions of a man of the South ?
Yes, Mr. Guthrie, wise and good man as Mr. Banks concedes he is, —
Mr. Guthrie, a man of the South, suggests and procures the modifi-
cation of the tariff; and yet, in the face of this, Mr. Banks, on
account of six months' delay of its enactment, would have us believe
that " i7 iiHis defeated^'' ancl that therefore the North has cause of
enmity and hatred against the South !
Gentlemen, the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the
United States comes here to impute the delay to the President,
when, if he will remember what was passing before him, in the
House over which he presided, he will see that the real cause of the
21
delay was in the condition, views, and action of the responsible
majority of that very House of Representatives.
Go back six months from the time when the new tirifT provisions
passed, to the closing hours of the first session of that Congress, and
see the spectacle exhibited! Why did not that majority which Mr.
Banks represented, pass at once the law, which, if passed, would,
we are told, have prevented all financial difficulties ? Is not the
answer palpable ? They were full of Kansas, — they were wild about
Kansas, — everybody had a speech to make on Kansas and must make
it, — nay, the ver}' wheels of the Government were stopped, in that
insane agitation over Kansas, by the mouth of Speaker Banks him-
self, announcing the premature adjournment of the House of Repre-
sentatives! Because of the zeal of that House to feed the flame of
civil fury it was, and therefore only, that the interests of the manu-
fiicturers were overlooked, nay all the great interests of the United
Statesi
I take leave here to say, and I do it with pleasure, that, for all the
errors of statement which Mr. Banks commits, — and they are multi-
tudinous, in figures, facts, illustrations, not merely in the matters
which I have touched upon, but in many others which the public
press has signalized, — as to all this, I do not impute to Mr. Banks,
as others do, wilful misstatement. I see how it happened. The
speech contains internal evidence to show that. Mr. Banks had come
forward to make a speech in Faneuil Hall on the financial crisis. It
was needful, as he thought, in such a speech, at such a time,
addressed to the merchants of Boston, to address them with an apparent
mastery of statistical or documentary matter. And that matter was
to be collected and arranged on the preconceived and false idea, of
endeavoring to make it appear that the inhabitants of the Northern
and Southern States of the Union are natural and necessary enemies,
— and that the chief end of man, and of woman, at the North, is to
hate our fellow citizens of the South. He undertook a moral impos-
sibilit}^ and, in the performance of it, he raised up a monument, not
of honor and fame, but of unreason and error. He has compelled
us, — not absolutely to impeach his veracity, — nor of necessity to
charge wilful misstatement, — but to regard with permanent mistrust,
and to suspect as crudities or mistakes, all these rather ostentatious
compilations of statistical or documentary matter, which he occasion-
ally publishes under the name and guise of speeches on commerce or
finance.
But, to return to Mr. Banks' explanation of our financial embar-
rassments— he, in the second place, informs us, thej^ are to be attrib-
uted to " reckless extravagance of the General Government," —
meaning, by the General Government, that very Mr. Guthrie, whom
he had previously admitted to be among the best and most upright
of men. This he explains thus : —
" The average expenses of the Administration, for each of the four years pre-
ceding lSo'2, was less than fifty milHons of dollars. The average expenditure of
the four years last past was seventy-two millions."
Here is imputation of "reckless extravagance." in the difference
between fifty millions and seventj'-two, imputed to the last Adroinis-
22
tratiou ; and that extravagance the cause of the failure of the Ohio
Life and Trust Company, and of the panic of the Banks of Xew
York. Now, the fact happens to be, that this very difference, of
twelve millions per annum, consists mainly of payments, in advance,
on account of the public debt, advised and executed by Mr. Guthrie
for the reason, among others, that, in so doing, he relieved commerce,
and strengthened the currency, by sending into circulation the coin
locked up in the treasury. All the Avorld commended this at thg
time. All the world has recently applauded the same policy in Secre-
tary Cobb. And this, a measure of the most beneficent character to
the country, it is, in effect, which constitutes the reckless extrava-
gance of the last four years of the General Government.
And, if such extravagance had existed, whose the fault ? Mr.
Banks will not venture to say, he does not say, that the President,
or his Cabinet, determines the expenditures of the General Govern-
ment. He knows that Congress does this. And sp, anticipating this
objection, he proceeds to say that it is because, during the last few
years, the country has been " rent with discussions on the slave
question ; " and because, " in the heat of discussion of that irritating
subject," every body has been "blind, deaf, and dead" to all other
considerations. And therefore, according to Mr. Banks, no member
of Congress could look into the expenditures of the government.
The conclusion is vmsound. Aiiy member of Congress could do it,
who chose. Many members did choose ;, but they struggled in vain,
it is true, to gain the ear of a House given up to agitation, about
Kansas.
Mr. Banks sees the evil. But does he propose a remedy r No !
On the contrary, the whole point of his speech, the thread of thought
which runs throughout its contexture, its closing summary, the very
ground on Avhich he claims the suffrages of tlie people of Massachu-
setts, is to continue to make the discussion of the slave question the
paramount, if not the exclusive, occupation of the people of the
United States.
In the third place Mr. Banks, — by argument from the cession of
swamp lauds in the West to the States in which they lie, and land
grants to States for aid in the construction of railways, — labors to
continue the topic of financial distress as a cause of animosity be-
tween the North and the South. There is not time for me to comment
at length on the facts and inferences of Mr. Banks in this relation ;
for every one of them requires criticism and contradiction, either in
part or in v^^hole, more especially in regard to the question of respon-
sibility, as between the Executive and Congress, and as between the
great sections of the Union. The simple fact is, that all these land
grants, if sectional in their character, are questions, not of slave
labor States against free labor States, but of the old Thirteen States,
North and South alike, against the new States of the West. That is
a large topic, not capable of just exhibition in this relation. Suffice
it for me, here, to deny the premises ; to deny the conclusion ; and,
above all, to lament the unhappy state of mind, which thus dedicates
itself to the unholy task of incessantly fanning the embers of discon-
tent, and seeking to iiifuse tl\e venom of sectional animosity into the
whole business of life in these United States, under the guise of
resisting the slave power.
Aye, the slave power, — jealousy of the political potver assumed as
the consequence of the possession of slaves by the South, — pursuit
of poiccr at the North by artful appeals to that jealousy, — sucli is
the theme of the Republican candidate for the executive chair of the
Commonwealth. Not the poor slave, — not the abolition of involun-
tary servitude as a moral wrong, — not the sufferings of the bondage-
bred sons of Africa, — but the poioer of the white men of the Southern
States. Mr. Banks does not indulge in visionary schemes of emanci-
pation. Mr. Garrison, Mr. Phillips, or Mr. Sumner may plead for
the liberty of the bond-man; but Mr. Banks pleads fbr power. So
far is he from demanding the political equality of all races, tliat he
spontaneously suggests, in his speech at Springfield, the disfranchise-
ment of the Chinese in California, the application to them of the
decision in the case of Dred Scott, — the Chinese, but a shade in color
darker than ourselves, — the Chinese, a cultured and lettered race, the
depositaries of the oldest and most tenacious of all the forms of
human civilization. What! Shall not the disciple of Confucius and
Mencius say, as well as the black savage of Africa, — Am not I a man,
and a brother ? Oh, no ! he is to be trampled on, a« of inferior cast
to us, seeing that his condition, for better or worse, does not involve
any question of j^oioer between the North and the South.
Jealousy of the South ! Such would not be my theme, if the de-
mon of sectional hate had so possessed itself of me. I should not
strive to draw the attention of Massachusetts away from the only real
danger, of a sectional nature, which threatens, and to fasten her
attention to an imaginary one. Not by the comparatively small
section of the Union, lying between Mason and Dixon's line and the
Gulf of Mexico, is the sceptre of power in this Union to be held
hereafter ; but by those vast regions of the West, State after State
stretching out, like star beyond star in the blue depths of the firma-
ment, far away to the shores of the Pacific. What is the power of
the old Thirteen, North or South, compared with that of the mighty
West ? There is the seat of empire, and there is the hand of impe-
rial power. Tell me not of the perils of the slave power, and the
encroachments of the South. Massachusetts and South Carolina will
together be but as clay in the fingers of the potter, when the great
West shall reach forth its arm of jjower, as ere long it will, to com-
mand the destinies of the Union.
But far from me be all such unworthy jealousy either of the South
or the West. I am content to be one of those, whom Mr. Banks
arraigns, because of their resistance to the depraved sectional piissions
at the North, of which he has taken upon himself the special advo-
cacy and patronage. But I am not content that he should insultingly
insinuate, as he does, that every man at the North, aye, the whole North
as one man, according to him, is characterized by a craven spirit of
unworthy compliance. That you may be satisfied I do not misrepre-
sent him, I quote one of the expressions. It is a passage already
quoted for another purpose, and which I requote, inserting now the
apj)lauses in the revision of his speech by Mr. Banks, as follows : —
i
24
" Mr. Guthrie never faltered. Every year for four years (Mr. Banks means
three years, but he is very inexact on all matters of date and figures) lie repeated
his views, with increa.sed strength, as an honest man should. Ikit the President
was a man from anotlier section of the country. (Laughter.) He did what Presi-
dents will sometimes do. He came down at the bidding of a superior power.
(Renewed merriment.)"
And that is uttered in the ears of men of New England ! Aye,
and the men of New England are deliberately represented, by the
orator himself, as laughing merrily at the idea of the imputed univer-
sal dishonesty of themselves, the men of New England ! For that is
the. idea. Mr. Banks is not satisfied with saying — and we have seen
upon what gross errors of fact he says that, — he is not satisfied with
groundlcssly and wantonly saying, that President Pierce, being the
reverse of Mr. Guthrie, in honesty of character, came down., — but he
imputes this ^s a general trait of the " section of the country," to
which the Ei-President belongs. If the imputed fact had been true,
as it is not, it would have aff'orded good cause of personal reproach in
the opposite quarter. Mr. Guthrie, as Mr. Banks admits, is a brave
and honorable man. What^might be said of him, if he had acquiesced,
and remained in the Cabinet, Avith the President disingenuously coun-
teracting his views ? I know him. He would not have remained a
day, no, not a minute. We should ha-^ seen him take up his hat
and cane, without a word, and his tall form stalk off, and make tracks,
on the instant, for Kentucky. If Mr. Banks had reflected well on
his own premises, he would have perceived that his conclusion was
impossible. To give a shadow of plausibility to his conclusion, it
would be necessary to reverse the well known traits of Mr. Guthrie,
and charge unworthy complaisance, not on the President, but on him,
and, pursuing the same line of thought, to chai'ge it on his Avhole sec-
tion of country. For, I say, Mr. Banks does not merely impute
dishonest compliance to President Pierce, but, in making this imputa-
tion, he explains, that this was not a fault of the individual character
of the President, — by no means, — it was the quality of the section
of country of which he is, — in other words, of Noav England.
Fellow citizens of Massachusetts and New England, I call upon
you to mark, and stamp with indignation, this unpardonable assault
upon the character of every man of New England, and the circum-
stances and inducements under which it is made. One of your own
citizens is a candidate for your sufli'ages. He pleads his cause in
person before you. That cause consists, from beginning to end, of a
coming down of his from the elevation of a national statesman,
whereon he might and should stand, to pander to the diseased appe-
tite for sectionalism and sectional animosity, wdiich unhappily lingers
among us, but only in the breasts of less than one-third of the people
of Massachusetts. If there ever was an act of " coining down at the
hid ding of a svperioj' powc7'," it is this, in which the Speaker of the
House of Representatives of the United States asks to be made Gov-
ernor of Massachusetts, on the ground, as elaborately explained by
him in person, — on the ground to, which he comes down at the bid-
ding of the superior power of passionate sectionalism, — the ground
of mere hatred of our fellow citizens of the South. And, to make
out a plausible case, even at that, he is obliged, not only to picture
25
in the most odious colors the character of individual statesmen of the
North, but to stigmatize in the mass the whole population of New
England! And, under the stigma of this imputation, the men nf
New England, according to Mr,. Banks, laugh, laugh here in Faneuil
Hall with renewed merrimenl. I should have supposed, on the con-
trary, that the verj' walls of Faneuil Hall would have rung out, in a
peal of irrepressible resentment, with "mouths full loud." at this
most wrongful imputation on the character of all New England.
Fellow citizens, we have had too much of this ! Too long has that
most doe-faced of all doe-facedness, a trembling compliance with
some party passion of the hour, assumed injuriously to impute its
awn infirmity of temper to all those, who hold fasl, in .«pite of dis-
couragement, to independence and to truth, and who, — loving their
country, and their whole country, — with Winthrop, prefer a united
Nation to a united North ; or with Choate, reverently follow the
flag and keep step to the music of the Union. I say, there has been
quite enough of this, as to persons, and it has got to stop. For we
now have its consummation in the form, in which Mr. Banks puts it,
of indiscriminate insult to the whole of New England.
Yes, men of Massachusetts, I say that line of wretched sectionalism
of thought, and the set of narrow ideas which appertain to it, have
had their day. It has come to pall on the sense, and revolt all good
sentime nt. Massachusetts feels, instinctively, that her mind is capable
of better uses than to be perpetually secreting poison from the bless-
ings of nature and society, — picking flaws in the institutions of the
country, — and regarding the United States in the little, through
inverted telescopes. We are not all of us, here in ^Massachusetts,
atrabilarious, hypochondriac, with sour humors in the blood causing us
to see black objects dancing before the mind's vision, by day and by
night. We do not believe, as from the loud assumptions of a particu-
lar school, and their busy activity at conventions and in public assem-
blies, it might be inferred we do, that all religion, all integrity, all
honor, consists in being a cordial hater of the rest of the United
States.
No, gentlemen of the Kepublican party, I defy you to establish
permanently, in this Commonwealth, that impossible policy of ran-
corous and vindictive hatred of all the white men of the South, and
of all the white men of the North Avho refuse to join you in hatred
of the South. You may attain power in the State of Massachusetts,
from time to time, but never by your own strength. You are not a
majority of the citizens of the State: you are not even a plurality.
It is only by a series of unstable coalitions with other parties, each
succeeding one more deceptive and transitory than the last, that you
ever ri=e even to the appearance of power. And such power, as you
may attain here, will prove but apples of Sodom in your mouth; for
the hypothesis, on which yovi proceed, will never allow you to reach
that, which all the higher aspirations of your public life look to, —
power in the United States. You may be the idol of a sectional or
local party, but with a weight on its shoulders, like the rock of
Sisyphus, to keep you toiling in vain to reach the bright summits of
" The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar."
26
You may be great in a single State, but with a greatness which looms
out luridly from the mists and gloom of sectional discord and strife, —
and with names never destined to swell the pealing anthem of the
glories of the United States.
God grant, that, in these things, a better spirit may hereafter pre-
vail among all the citizens of this State ; that instead of giving them-
selves up to sectional agitation, and to the propagation of ideas, which
are s-terile of any possible fruit, save civil war, — they would cultivate
concord and harmony. May so mmy clergymen, now tlie ministers
of discord and anger, go back to the pure ministry of the Gospel !
And Mr. Banks himself, so capable of better things, let us entreat,
in the earnest language of Francesca to Alp, to pause, ere he devote
himself to an "immortality of ill," as the irreclaimable enemy of the
unity and peace of the United States. Oh, that he had but chosen
the nobler part ! How much better and purer the honors he then
might win ! Of those men of Massachusetts, who in our time have
been called by Providence to places of high power in the Federal
Government, Adams, Webster, and Marcy have gone to occupy each
his bright page in the golden book of the names of the great men
of the country, whose memory death hallows ; three only, Everett,
Bancroft, and ..one other, have held foreign embassies or served in
the Cabinet ; four only, Choate, Everett, Winthrop, and Rockwell,
have represented their State in the Senate ; and of tliis small number
of surviving men of Massachusetts, of similar political position, all
but one have stepped over that line which divides the past from the
future, and are now far removed from the fresh years of life. How
few the obstacles to the advancement of a younger aspirant in the
same path ! How unwise in a Speaker of the House of Eepresenta-
tives of the United States, to seek to hurry advancement, by. the
endeavor, vain let us hope, to rekindle, in Massachusetts, the expiring
embers of ill-will towards our fellow citizens of the Southern States I
1 feci admonished that it would be unreasonable to trespass much
longer on your indulgence. I hasten, therefore, to a conclusion.
Gentlemen of the Young Men's Democratic Association, j'ou belong
to that great party, which now stands alone in its glory, as the refuge
of constitutional opinions, and as the depository of the hopes of the
American Union.
In the Federal Government, you have, at the head of public affairs,
a statesman of approved wisdom, experience, and patriotism, — emi-
nent in all the ca])abilities demanded by his high station, and who,
with the aid of a Cabinet of Avise, experienced, and patriotic men, is
administering tlie government in the spirit of the Fathers of the
Republic. Him, you are proud to honor, — him, you can, with emu-
lous respect, hold up to the confidence and support of your fellow
citizens of the State.
For the admiuisiration of the State, you have, in Beach and Cur-
rier, candidates, worthy, by the admission of all, of your cordial adhe-
sion, and fitted, in all things, to do honor to Massachusetts. Let no
doubts of success, — no timid calculation of other contingencies, —
cause you to swerve a hair's breadth from the straight line of duty.
Labor untiringly for the day, — near at hand, it is to be hoped, and if
not near yet assuredly not remote, — when the Commonwealth shall
27
rejoice to put her welfare in their hands, and assume her own fit
pUice in the direction of the affairs of the Union.
The Commonwealth needs their services. Its disordered finances,
— the intolerable burden of its expenditures, — the misdirection of its
counsels, — require the remedy of a Democratic Administration, alike
in the Executive Chamber, and the Legislative Halls. Nothing less
can restore its lost position, and its lost self-respect.
To conclude, then : Merchants of Massachusetts, with your superb
galleons from the shipyards of East Boston and Newburyport, mov-
ino- over the sea in the pride of their beauty and their strength,
freighted with the rich agricultural productions of Carolina and
Louisiana, you have been told here, that your interests are in conflict
with those of the South ! — Manufacturers of Massachusetts, you,
with your palatial manufactories to weave into apparel, for the world's
wear, the agricultural productions of Georgia and Alabama, have been
told here, that you must surrender yourselves to the evil spirit of
jealousy of the South. — Citizens of Massachusetts, and especially you
of the industrial classes, who wear the cotton, eat the corn and sugar,
and drink the coS"ee of slave labor, and who provide objects of art
for the use of slave labor, and of those who own it, you also have
been told that slave labor is the irreconcilable antagonist of free labor,
and that therefore, leaving all other things, you must betake your-
selves to hating the South, with a sworn hatred like that of Annibal
for Rome. — Men of ]\Lassachusetts, you are exhorted to cultivate
amicable reUitions with Cuba, — slave colony though it be, — to supply
it with lumber, food, and other objects of value, and to buy and con-
sume its products, and thus to sustain and perpetuate slave labor
there, and love slave owners, while you are called upon to sacrifice
the peace and honor of the State, and dedicate yourself, from the
reprobation of slave labor, to unceasing hostility against your own
countrymen of the Southern States. —
When I hear such counsels darkly intimated, under specious dis-
guises of speech, to the State of Massachusetts, it seems to me that
the First Tempter, as depicted by Milton, is before my eyes : —
" Close at the ear of Eve,
Assaying by his devilish art to reach
The organs of her fancy, and with them forge
Illusions, as he lists, phantasms and dreams ;
Or if, inspiring venom, he might taint
The animal spirits, tliat from pure blood arise,
Like gentle breaths from rivers pure, thence raise,
At leas^t distempered, discontented thoughts,
Tain hopes, vain aims, inordinate desires,
Blown up with high conceits engendering pride."
My friends, to dispel such mischievous inspirations, it needs but
the lightest touch of Ithuriel's spear of truth.
I say, down, down to the infernal pit, where they belong, with all
these devilish insinuations of malice, hatred and uncharitableness !
You, the people of Massachusetts, do not, in the inner chamber of
your heart, approve, and will not, on consideration, adopt, this abomi-
nable theory of sectional spite and hate. You will, in the end, if not
to-day, repel that policy with scorn and horror. Before that time of
sober judgment comes, I, who stand up for the Union, in its letter
28
and spirit, — who will die in the breach rather than " let it slide," —
I may be struck down by the tempest of party passion, but others,
better and more fortunate, will rise up to fill the gap in the ranks of
the sacred phalanx of the soldiers of the Constitution. Man is feeble,
mortal, transient; but our Country is powerful, immortal, eternal.
In the long ages of glory which lie before us, rolling onward one
after another like the ceaseless rote of the surging waters on the sea
shore, wave upon wave rushing on to fill the place of that which sinks
into the main, generations of men will come and go, wdth their joys
and sorrows, their aspirations and disappointments, their conflicts and
their reconciliations. Then it will be seen, that he who was the high-
est had been but an atom of the great whole, and he who was hum-
blest had been as much. We are alike in the hands of the Almighty,
and but the instruments of His Avill in the doing of the great work,
commeiiced by our Fathers at Jamestown and Plymouth, continued
by them at Saratoga and Yorktown, carried on by us at Monterey
and Mexico, — the great work of reducing to cultivation and civiliza-
tion the savannahs and forests of our Country. Massachusetts, once
the banner State of the Union, will not be found backward', at the
hour of need, in performing her appointed part of that great work of
the Lord God in the New World.
SPEECH IN NEWBURYPOUT.
FdJoui Citizens and Friends : —
I have consented to address you this evening, with reluctance.
Not from unwillingness to oblige, of course, or to contribute, if in
my power, to your instruction. Indeed, my relations of gratitude to
this city, to say nothing of regard and affection for its individual
inhabitants, make it a duty, as well as a pleasure, on my part, to
comply with your wishes on this or any similar occasion. But, for the
same reason, it is disagreeable to me to discuss, here, parti/ politics ;
to speak in opposition to any body ; to trespass on the convictions of
any citizen of Newburyport. That sentiment will guide me this
evening. It will be my purpose to discuss principles rather than
parties ; to defend my own views of the public interests, but without
attacking those of others, at least in any hostile sense.
In a Avord, it is my theme to urge attention to the affairs of Massa-
chusetts, in contradistinction to the exclusive consideration of those
of the United States. It is true that, in doing this, it will be neces-
sary to speak at some length of sundry Federal questions. I shall do
this, however, in the single aim of endeavoring to satisfy you that
many of those things, in the affairs of the Federal Government,
which have heretofore absorbed your attention, ought to do so no
longer ; that neither their nature, nor any possible relation of theirs
to th'e public interests, requires that they should ; and that you may
well pause for a time from agitation concerning the policy of the
United States, and turn your attention more particularly to that of
the State of Massachusetts.
I observe that a writer in the Daily Advertiser, in criticism of the
speech lately delivered by me in Boston, says that much of it was
devoted to national affairs. The criticism is not just in the sense in
which it is made and applied. I spoke then, as I propose now to
speak, to the end of discouraging, so far as may be in my power, a
substitution of certain national issues in the place of questions of
more immediate interest to us ; to do which effectually, it was neces-
sary to meet other gentlemen on their own premises, and correct what
seemed to me untenable as reason, and unpatriotic of spirit, in the
views of national policy, Avhich they sought to impress on the people
of Massachusetts, and so to make the guiding thought of the electors
in the election of the officers of the State!
I do not intend, either by substantive suggestions, or by the
language in which they shall be presented, to wound the just suscep-
tibilities of any person, of any party, who may honor me with his
attention ; but on the contrary, to reason calmly on certtiin questions
of the day, as among friends, and in the style and spirit of conversa-
30
•
tion, rather tlum of disputatious debate, or even of ordinary popula-
cloquence.
The current questions of the day are of two great classes, constitu-
tional ones and practical ones ; the first, involving considerations of
mere law, and the second, of common sense and practical wisdom. 1
shall have to begin with the first class of questions. AVhat, yon may
ask, discuss questions of constitutional law to a popular assembly ?
I say yes, why not ? We need to understand such questions, if the
public peace turns upon them, and more especially if misapprehen-
sions regarding them are at the bottom of much agitation in the pub-
lic mind, and if the only way to calm that agitation is to correct those
misapprehensions. And why hesitate to discuss constitutional ques-
tions before a popular assembly ? It is our boast that the people oi
this country are its legitimate sovereigns. Of course, they do, or
should, comprehend their own rights and powers. That they do so in
fact is universally assumed, in the system of popular election as the
means of selecting the agents of government and communicating
direction to its policy and its acts. I do believe that the people of
the United States are competent to consider and to judge such ques-
tions, and that it can be no more out of place for an American states-
man to discuss them at the forum of the American people, than it was
for the great masters of thought and speech, in ancient times, to dis-
cuss similar questions before the people of Athens or of Rome. Least
of all can that be out of place in the presence of an assembly of the
educated and enlightened people of Massachusetts.
To show how necessary it has become, in the political affairs of the
State, to discuss mere questions of law to the people, it needs only to
refer to the recent letter of a respectable gentleman in Springfield,
(Mr. Chapman,) which had for its purpose to assign " the principal
reason" why he shall now vote for the gubernatorial candidate of a
party, to which he says he has "never belonged." Now, what4:hink
you is this principal reason ? Is it the superior qualifications of the
candidate, or any special fitness of his for the office of governor ?
No, that he does not pretend. Is it the general integrity, sound
principles, or capacity for the public good of the party, for whose
candidate he now for the first time votes ? No, — he does not profess
to have any better opinion of their party or its candidate now, than
heretofore, when he voted against them. Is it because the gentleman
thinks ill, either absolutely or relatively, of the candidate, whom he
now abandons'? By no means. Is he filled with a dread of the
slave power ? Is he about to dedicate himself to the cause of emanci-
pation ? Is it because of some overpowering emergency of the pub-
lic interest, that he feels impelled to vote for the candidate of a party
to which he does not belong, as when certain Federalists in the House
of Representatives voted for Jefferson ? No, it is nothing of that.
What is it, then? — you all inquire. My friends, you would never
guess. It is, Mr. Chapman says, because " there is one question
sometchfit involved in this election, on ivhich I roish to give a vote."
Now, the question, which is onltj somewhat involved after all, is a
naked legal question, as to which not the Supreme Court of the Uni-
ted States, nor even the Attorney-General, but the President, has
expressed an opinion, which Mr. Chapman thinks is not good law.
31
To sliow his own opinion the other way, Mr. Chapman votes for the
candidate of a party to which he does not belong, without stopping
to inquire how many erroneous opinions on the other side he thus
emphatically sanctions. That, he thinks of no importance ; he sacri-
fices every thing to the desire of testifying his own opinion of a single
abstruse point of law.
I think, therefore, my friends, you will be satisfied that we must
talk mere law a little, sometimes, even before a popular assembly.
I perceive some ladies have honored me with their presence here
to-night. I half regret it. Good taste forbids me to address them
specially, and the questions we have to consider, particularly the
legal ones, are as dry as the old parchments on which the la^vs are
enrolled. But the ladies may derive one useful subject of reflection
from hearing the questions of the day discussed. It is stated of one
of the least reputable of the Koman Emperors, Elagabalus, that he
instituted a senate of ladies, with his mother for president, and that
the institution broke down upon a desperate controversy between its
members on the fashion of their head gear, and the proper style of
robes of ceremony. This, belieA^e me, is a despicable calumny of
some crusty old bachelor. The mother of Elagabalus, Soremias, was
a better man than he, in so far as force of character constitutes man-
liness ; and she, and her sister, Mamrea, and her mother, McEsa,
Avere the ruling spirits of their time, who made and unmade empe-
rors, and would have established a dynasty if they could have
assumed the purple toga in their own persons. And it needs but to
remember such cases as Elizabeth of England and Catherine of
Russia, to show us that it is not convenient, even here, to call in
question the capacity of the ladies for exercising the powers of gov-
ernment. Far be from me any such rash thought. On the contrary,
if the men of Rome laughed at the apparent triviality of the subjects
of discussion of the members of the female senate of Elagabalus, it
seems to me that the women of America have much greater cause to
wonder that their fathers, husbands, sons, brothers, and lovers get so
much disturbed and excited over the remnants of two or three old ques-
tions of law, Avhich are now the chief ostensible subjects of difference
to divide the people of the United States.
I desire, if possible, to allay in some degree this disturbance and
excitement in the public mind, which arises at the North out of
disapprobation of the system of slave labor at the South, and the
supposition here of encroachment, as it is called, of the South on the
North, in the matter of recent acts of Congress, and decisions of the
Supreme Court of the United States.
To begin, let me call your attention to one of the fundamental
ideas in the organization of the Union, that of the equality of the
several States. Without the recognition of this, the Union never
would have been formed. That, — the concession by the large States,
such as Virginia and Massachusetts, of the independence and sove-
reignty, and consequently equal rights, of the small States, such as
Delaware and Rhode Island, was the primary condition of the Union.
This idea was consecrated in the fact of an equal representation in the
Senate being accorded alike to the large and to the small States.
The Senators are the representatives, the ministers, the ambassadors,
32
so to speak, of the individual States in the Congress of the United
States. Ill thus according to each State the representative right of
sovereignt}^ the Constitution also accorded to each equality of rights
within itself, in the exercise of all the powers of legislation, subject
only to the restrictions and limitations prescribed by the Constitution.
The constitutional effects of this idea were not fully appreciated at
the outset ; that is, it needed the teaching of events, as they hap-
pened from time to time, to exhibit the practical working of the idea,
whether in the legislation of Congress or in that of the several
States. Hence, not only in the ordinances which preceded the adop-
tion of the Constitution, but also in acts of Congress passed after-
ward,?, provisions occur, which impose limitations and restrictions
on som:; of the States without imposing the same on others of them,
and thiS constitute inequality of legislative authority and of legal
condition as between the two classes of States.
This inequality of condition did not become distinctly apparent
until a comparatively mature period of time in the history of the
government. It happened thus. After the admission of the State
of Alabama into the Union, the attention of its people became fixed
on the fact, that while, in the adjoining State of Georgia, the riparian
lands, between high and low water, the flats so called, >^',were of
the domain of that State, yet the same lands in the State of Alabama
continued to be regarded as of the domain of the United States.
Alabama was one of the new States formed out of territory belonging
to the United States, while Georgia was one of the old thirteen
States ; and in each of the old thirteen States, including Georgia,
the riparian rights had been held by it before the Revolution, and so
continued afterwards, while, in the new States, the same rights were
considered as integral parts of the public lands, and so vendible and
patentable by the United States. At length, the people of Alabama
made question with the United States on this point, the State under-
taking to give patents there, as of its right, in disregard of the patents
granted by the Federal Government. In the regular course of legal
controversy that question came before the Supreme Court of the
United States, in the year 1844-5, and it was then adjudged that, in
virtue of the necessary and inherent equality of the States, these
rights, belonging to the old States within their limits, must also,
within its limits, belong to the State of Alabama. It availed nothing
to cite, on the other side, compacts by act of Congress and by ordi-
nance of the Constitutional Convention of Alabama, to the contrary
of this ; for, ruled the Supreme Court, no act of Congress binding the
sovereign power and legislative authority of the State of Alabama in
any respect, as to which the legislative power and sovereign authority
of the State of Georgia are not also bound, can be valid ; it must be
null and void, because incompatible with the iiniversal paramount
principle of the political equality of all the States.
This, observe, was a controversy in the State of Alabama, sug-
gested by the perception there of the fact of inequality between it
and the State of Georgia, on the premises of these riparian lands
belonging to the United States. It did not involve any question of
slave labor or any other question of possible sectional antagonism,
between the North and the South ; it was a mere question of right in
land, as between the new States and the old thirteen States.
33
'". The United States, or their grantees, were not content with this
^decision ; they brought the question before the Supreme Court again,
in the year 1849-50, and the Supreme Court again decided that, in
virtue of the constitutional equality of the old and new States, the
State of Alabama, on the moment of its admission into the Union,
and in virtue of that fact, and in spite of any legislative acts or ordi-
nances to the contrary, became constitutionally entitled "to these ripa-
rian lands, and they passed, by reason of the doctrine of the rights
and equality of the States, from the hands of the United States into
those of Alabama.
^Still the United States, or their grantees, Avere not content ; and
they proceeded once more, and a third time, to submit this question
to the Supreme Court, Avhich persisted in its decision, and for the
third time, in 1851-2, dismissed the question as one which no longer
admitted of controversy.
Meanwhile, another case came up, and this time from the State of
Louisiana, which tested the doctrine of the equality of the States,
and the nullity of any provision outside of the Constitution impairing
this equality. In this case it was not a modern act of Congress, but
a provision of the great ordinance of 1787, which came under consid-
eration. The plaintiff in the case, Permoli, contended that the
municipality of New Orleans had violated rights of religious free-
dom, guarantied by the ordinance of '87, and thus the validity of that
ordinance came to be the question to be passed upon by the Supreme
Court. They decided that it was a nullity, because it impaired, so
far forth, the legislative power of the State of Louisiana, in a par-
ticular matter, as to which there was in the Constitution no corres-
pondent limitation of the legislative power of any one of the old States
of the Union.
But, if the ordinance of 1787 is null in itself, null as a whole, then
all its parts are null, including that provision which appertains to
involuntary servitude ; for, if the State of Ohio be not allowed the
same discretion, to tolerate or not tolerate slave labor within her
limits, as the state of Virginia has, then Ohio and Virginia are not
co-equal States, but Ohio is in a position of unconstitutional infe-
riority to Virginia.
That precise question did not long delay to come before the Su-
preme Court. It happened in this Avay. Certain colored men of the
State of Kentucky were allowed by their masters to cross the river
into Ohio, and there to have occupation as musicians at public assem-
blies, returning after that into the State of Kentucky. Had they
been rendered free by their sojourn in the State of Ohio ? It was
claimed by or for them that they had ; and that was the question for
the determination of the Supreme Court : — which decided that, in virtue
of the equality of the States, the provision of the ordinance of 1787,
prescribing free labor in the State of Ohio, that is, limiting in this
respect the legislative power of Ohio, was a nullity, because thus
restricting that legislative power of Ohio, while no such restriction
existed in the case of New York or Pennsylvania. The Supreme
Court decided in this case as, from the legal sequence of previous
decisions, it was bound to do, that no effect could be given to the
34
ordinance in the case, and that the legal status of the parties de-
pended on the constitution of the State of their domicile and resi-
dence for the time ; if in Ohio, on that of Ohio ; if in Kentucky, on
that of Kentucky. That conclusion was in conformity, as well with
the doctrine of the right of each State, as with that of the equality of
all the States. This was in 1850-51. And thus, by a series of de-
cisions, embracing various branches of the subject, the doctrine of
the equality of the States, in all these relations, was determined and
established af5 law.
Finally, the Supreme Court have recognized the doctrine in another
relation, that of the navigation of the rivers of the United States.
Now, in the year 1852, with such adjudications of settled law on
this point, all, who reflected on it, saw one more inevitable step at
hand- It had not yet been visibly taken ; but it had' been taken by
the feet of the mind, as it were, on the part of all careful observers of
the progress of constitutional opinion. That step was to apply to the
Missouri Compromise the doctrine of the equality of States. It had
been applied to the ordinance of 1787, which, in organizing, before
the date of the Constitution, the territory north-west of Ohio, ceded
to the United States by Virginia, Massachusetts and others, — con-
trolled in advance, or professed to do so, the legislative power of the
States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Missouri, and so
placed them in a position of inferiority, shorn of essential elements
of sovereignty, relatively to the other States. It had applied that
doctrine to acts of Congress, which undertook the same, and to com-
pacts with States which undertook it, not only in the matter of public
lands, but in other matters ; for it was by act of Congress that the
ordinance of 1787 was applied to the State of Louisiana, and it was
in a case from this State that the ordinance was dealt with, and pro-
nounced a nullity under the Constitution. All these acts and ordi-
nances had been declared null and void, for the very and sole reason,
that they restricted the free action of the new States, in things, as to
which the Constitution did not speak, and as to which therefore there
was no restriction on the old States. But that was the very thing,
which the statute accompanying the admission of Missouri, — the Mis-
souri Compromise, — did. It was nothing else but an act com-
manding and prescribing in advance the institutions, in a particular
matter, to be established by the new States to be formed on the
territory ceded by Louisiana to the United States. Therefore, it was
unconstitutional and a nullity.
I foresaw that adjudication to this effect must come, and so pre-
dicted in official opinion, rendered on a question of conflicting juris-
diction between the United States and the State of Florida. It did
come in the case of Dred Scott, Avhich determined no new principle,
but merely accepted, and applied to a new case, a principle long since
thoroughly and fully settled in all other cases. That the decision
embarrassed persons not of the legal profession, is not to be wondered
at ; the wonder is, that it surprised any person of the legal profession.
If the series of decisions under review had been of the time of Coke,
nay, of that of Mansfield, or of Ellenborough, learned lawyers and
law professors would have comprehended their bearing and effect, and
35
would not have been troubling themselves, — down to this day, even, —
Avith discussing the law of the Missouri Compromise and Dred Scott's
case, utterly oblivious of the cases of Pollard i^s. Hagan, Pollard vs.
Kibbe, Hallctt vs. Beebe, Permoli vs. New Orleans, Strader vs. Gra-
ham, and Veazie vs. Moor.
Such then is the law of the land, as pronounced by its constituted
judicial authorities, and so fixed by its relation to various interests,
more especially the public lands in the new States, that it cannot bt
changed without an amendment of the Constitution ; or rather lee
me say, it cannot be changed Avithout a revolution and a sanguinary
civil war — not a war between the slave labor States and the free labor
States, but a war between the old thirteen States and the new States
of the great West. And if, in the case of Dred Scott, it had been
morally possible for the Supreme Court to decide otherwise than it
did, — if that Court could have overlooked or overruled its previous
decisions in affirmance of the equality of the States, — to have done
that would have produced revolution.
And thus the law stood, when the question of organizing the new
territories of Kansas and Nebraska came up and had to be settled by
Congress. At that moment. Congress and the Executive were con-
strained to see that the Missouri Compromise had now become a
nullity in law, and could by no legal possibility exert any efi"ect in
the direction or government of the territory of Kansas. In accept-
ing, as they did, this state of facts, and recognizing it in the act for
the organization of the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, the South-
ern States made no gain in the matter of interest. They obtained by it,
and so did the Northern States in like manner obtain, the final authen-
tication of their relative equality of right, and that of the relative equality
of each and every one of the States. That was not a sectional gain,
either of interests or of principles : it was, in these respects, the gain of
the whole Union. The Union, or, to speak with more precision, the
people of the United States, made, in this act, another gain ; they gained
the complete recognition and firm establishment of the political doc-
trine that the people of each incipient new State shall, at the time of
their admission into the Union, have the power of determining for
themselves their future institutions, — without being subject, in this
respect, to the mere dictation and arbitrary will of Congress. Finally,
the v/hole people of the United States attained by this act the further
gain, of disposing of territorial questions, the question of slavery
included, upon premises legally right, — right in political theory, that
of popular sovereignty, — and aff'ording to all sections of the Union a
common and neutral ground of abstract justice and of nationality, on
which to meet together for the administration of the Federal Gov-
ernment.
I accept, therefore, my share of present and of future responsibility
in regard to the action of the Executive of the United States, in the
matter of Kansas. I know that it was the purpose and the anxious
endeavor of the President of the United States, as it was of the Sec-
retary of State, to secure to the proper inhabitants of Kansas per-
fectly fair play in the government of that Territory. I think it was
not their fault, if any thing in derogation of this, or any disorder of
36
whatever sort, occurred there ; but that it was the fault of the excited
passions of the hour, those passions being influenced, not only by out-
side agitators, aid companies, border ruflfians, and what not, but still
more by the mischievous intervention and systematic agitation of
parties in Congress, hoping and laboring, by means of this question,
to drive from power the Democratic party and instal the Republican
party in its place. In a word, it was a presidential question, engen-
dered, born, nursed, and left to die of inanition, with the progress
and termination of the pending election of a new President.
Whether it was good policy or not, on the part of the late Adminis-
tration, to do as it did in this respect, is of no consequence now save
as matter of history. I do not merely say it was right on the part
of that Administration to do as it did, but that it was morally im-
possible for it to do otherwise ; for the Administration had no power
to roll back the current of the decisions of the Supreme Court.
And, as regards the merits of that legislation, let me now ask you,
the people of Massachusetts, why continue to agitate that question ?
You cannot change the law : that is absolutely fixed beyond your
power. Why, then, worry ourselves concerning it, in Massachusetts ?
Could any thing be more unreasonable, more idle, more objectless?
Is not that now a question of the mere domain of history, and of no
more or other present interest than that of the innocence or guilt of
Mary Queen of Scots, or of Queen Anne Boleyn ? Yes, we might
as well quarrel and fight this day over either of those questions, just
as the Irish now do about William of Orange, as to persist in disturb-
ing our temper or that of our neighbors on account of the provisions
of the act for the organization of the territories of Nebraska and
Kansas.
I repeat, that I accept, without one thought of misgiving, my share
in the responsibility of the last Administration in that respect. I
appeal, as to any present condemnation of it, from the people of the
United States angry, to the same people in the calmness of matured
reconsideration, — from Philip drunk to Philip sober, — if that allusion
may without irreverence be applied to any portion of the people of
the United States.
I deny that in this measure President Pierce was guilty of any
departure from the provisions or the principles of his inaugural
address. I deny that he, or any act of his, this or any other, re-
opened the slavery agitation. I say that agitation was reopened by
those, who conceived that, upon its turbulent waves, an opposition
candidate for the presidency might be carried up to the White House.
But Providence has been just, and the administration of the Federal
Government is continued, not, to be sure, in the same hands, but in
the same party, in the same principles of public law, and in the same
policy of impartial neutrality, as respects all parts of the Union,
North and South, East and West.
I said just now, and said with intention, that it was the earnest
purpose and endeavor of the late President of the United States, as
well as of the Secretary of State, in whose department rested the
administration of the federal relations of Kansas, to secure to its
inhabitants, in their entirety and plenitude, all the benefits, in letter
37
•and spirit, of the provisions of the act of Congress for the organiza-
tion of the Tcrritor}^ I know not how the idea has got into circula-
tion that the President and his Secretary differed in policy on this
subject. I know not how it is that many other errors spring up in the
community to the displacement or obstruction of truth, nor how all the
tares come to choke the Avholesome growth of the wheat field. So it
seems to be in the order of things on earth.
Mr. Banks, in his speech here, was pleased to speak in compliment-
ary terms of the members of the late Cabinet. I thank him for his
courtesy, in their name as well as my own. If he had stopped there,
it would be Avell. But he proceeded to condemn President Pierce,
while praising his Ministers, and especially William L. Marcy. I
quote from the Bee, as follows : —
" He (Mr. Banks,) paid a high and merited tribute to the worth and memory
of Mr. Marcy, whose counsels/if heeded, Avould have prevented all the trouble,
which Mr. Pierce's administration had entailed upon the nation."
I suppose Mr. Banks alludes here to the controversy about Kansas,
its incidents and consequences, I cannot imagine any thing else ;
and the context shows it was that. He assumes that, in this, Mr.
Marcy gave unheeded counsels to the President.
My friends, Mr. Marcy was my daily associate, officially and per-
sonally, for the space of four years, and his memory is dear to me.
He was a son of Massachusetts, and his name should be cherished by
every citizen of the Commonwealth. I cannot, in your presence,
allow the suggestion of Mr. Banks to pass without notice.
Yet my relation to the subject is a delicate one. The advice which
a member of the Cabinet gives to the President, either separately, or
in the presence of his colleagues, is confidential. It is a privileged
communication, by law ; that is, the Supreme Court have decided, in
the case of Marbury vs. Madison, that a member of the Cabinet can-
not be required to disclose such things in a court of justice. Nay, it
has come, and justly, to be a point of honor, that no member of the
Cabinet is to disclose what occurs in consultation with, or advice to,
the President. Matters of this nature become public only when they
reach the stage of an official act of the Go\^ernment.
Thus, it is not proper for me to state, of my own knowledge, what
advice Mr. Marcy gave President Pierce- I can say nothing except
that which is of public notoriety, or which exists in such form as to be
capable of public notoriety. And the facts in this case are so far noto-
rious, that the marvel is, how Mr. Banks, or any body else possessed
of the same means of knowledge, should fall into the errors of fact,
and the errors of inference from supposed facts, which. he has com-
mitted, regarding the respective relation of Mr. Marcy and of Presi-
dent Pierce to the question of Kansas.
By the Constitution, the executive power of the United States is
vested in the President. But he cannot of himself do all the supreme
executive business of the Government. Hence, the Constitution sup-
poses that he has Cabinet Ministers, Heads of Departments, to advise
him, to act for him, to administer, under him, the affairs of the
Government.
At the foundation of the Government, these Cabinet Ministers
88
were four, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, the
Secretary of War, and the Attorney-General. They constituted the
Cabinet of "Washington. A fifth, the Secretary of the Navy, was
added in the time of John Adams. The Postmaster-General was
taken into the Cabinet by Jackson. And a seventh Department, that
of the Interior, with its Secretary, was created by a law, which went
into effect in the accession of Taylor. And so things now stand.
Of these departments of the Executive Government, the duties are
partly defined by law, and partly by orders, general or special, of the
President. For he is the Executive ; and they are his Ministers or
Secretaries.
At first, what is now the Department of State was called the
Department of Foreign Aff'airs. After it came to be called the De-
partment of State, it vt^as made the depository of much of the miscel-
laneous business of the Government. Thus, at the accession of
President Pierce, the Secretary of State conducted the correspondence
in foreign aff'airs ; superintended the appointment of foreign minis-
tei'S and consuls ; kept the statute rolls ; kept the great seal, and
affixed it to official papers ; superintended the administration of the
Territories ; superintended the investigation of applications for par-
don ; superintended the appointments of a legal nature, as judges,
attorneys and marshals ; and in addition to all that, he, like the other
Ministers, conducted any miscellaneous correspondence, or other
business, whieh might be specially required of him by the President.
These duties, even the ordinary ones enumerated, are, as you per-
cuive, of a very miscellaneous and a very onerous nature. Foreign
aflFairs are quite enough duty for one Secretary. Mr. Marcy saw this
when he entered on the duties of his office, and proceeded to consult
the Attorney-General, the legal adviser of the Government, on the
subject. They agreed to counsel the President to transfer, from the
office of the Secretary of State to that of the Attorney-General, three
great branches of the public business, — pardons, legal appointments,
and such legal correspondence of any of the Departments as its head
might see fit. Thus, if the President, or the Secretary of State, or
the Postmaster-General, chose to refer any matter of legal correspon-
dence, arising in their Departments, to the Attorney-General, it was
part of his duty to take charge of it. And thus it happened, that in
questions of foreign relation, such as the enlistment question, the
neutrality question, and others, the legal correspondence came out of
the office of the Attorney-General, that occurring, not as many persons
supposed, and as, on more than one occasion, public journals erro-
neously inferred and injuriously imputed, by the voluntary act of the
Attorney-General, but by the special request, in each case, generally
in writing, of the Secretary of State. In all these ways, and espe-
cially in the matter of pardons and legal appointments, the duties of
the Attorney-General were doubled, and those of the Secretary of
State so far forth diminished, — leaving to the latter, in substance,
foreign affairs, the custody of the great seal and the laws, and the
administration of the Territories.
And so, during the administration of President Pierce, Mr. Marcy
administered the Territory of Kansas. He issued the insinlctions to
39
the successive governors ; lie received their official letters ; he ad-
dressed official letters to them ; and it was a part of his particular
duty to keep in his mind the current of affairs in that Territory, and,
when asked, or without being asked, to give advice thereon to the
President. In a word, Mr. Murcy conducted, officially, and by
instructions and acts issued from his office, and bearing his signature,
the relations of the United States with Kansas, just as fully, and in
the same way, as he did the relations of the United States with Great
Britain.
The hypothesis of Mr. Banks assumes, in the first place, that Mr.
Marcy is to have the credit of the negotiations with Great Britain to
the complete exclusion of the President, and that the President is to |
have the blame of the conduct of the affairs of Kansas to the com-
plete exclusion of Mr. Marcy. That hypothesis is altogether gratuitous,
not warranted by any facts, and contrary to reason. Either the Presi-
dent directs, and is responsible for praise or blame in both branches of
business, or he does not direct, and praise or blame attaches to Mr.
Marcy. There is no escape from that dilemma, as a general pre-
sumption.
Mr. Banks contradicts this general presumption. What authority
has he for the contradiction? I know of none. But his hypothesis
then proceeds to assume, in the second place, that the affairs of Kansas
were misconducted, to the degree of producing all the troubles, which
Mr. Pierce's administration had entailed upon the nation ? What?
Did Mr. Marcy remain at the head of his department three years,
while its business continued to be thus misconducted ? Did he stay
in the Cabinet, while his advice was permanently disregarded ? Did
he from day to day sign and send off instructions and letters for the
government of Kansas, which were in his judgment prejudicial to the
public interests, entailing troubles on the country, and dishonor on
the Administration ? I say, no, gentlemen, that is impossible, mor-
ally impossible, monstrously impossible. It is totally incompatible
with the premises of the high worth of Mr. ]Marcy. To aver it, is to
affix an indelible stigma on his memory. As a man of honor, as an
upright and conscientious man, he could not have remained in the
Department and the Cabinet, a mere mechanical instrument, like a
copying clerk, signing and issuing orders, executing measures, carry-
ing out a policy, which his conscience disapproved, and which was
imposed on him by the mere will of the President. I say this is impos-
sible, and cannot be. Mr. Banks falls into the same fallacious mis-
conception here, in regard to Mr. Marcy, as he did in Faneuil Hall,
when speaking of Mr- Guthrie, and the falsely alleged difference of
opinion between him and President Pierce as to the tariff. In each
case, while professing to censure the President, and to applaud the
Secretary, he in fact imputes the most criminal violation of duty and
honor on the part of the Secretary. That is to say, he errs alike in
his premises and conclusions.
It is very singular that Mr. Banks, or any other gentleman of his
intelligence and experience, should have taken ixp such ideas, with
obvious reasons to show their fallacy, and with public documents
before him on the files of Congress to show their falsity, both as
40
respects Mr. Guthrie and Mr. Marcy. It is but another example of
the extreme, and, let me say, senseless, prejudices, which had some-
how got hold of many minds, as to the matter of Kansas, and as to
the late Administration as connected with it.
I come now to the case of Dred Scott, which, owing to certain
peculiar circumstances not convenient for me to speak of on this
occasion, has been greatly misunderstood or misrepresented in some
of the Northern States.
The case was this : Dred Scott, in 1834, was a negro slave in the
State of Missouri, belonging to Dr. Emerson, a surgeon in the army.
He went with Dr. Emerson, that year, to the military post of Rock
Island in the State of Illinois. Thence, in 1836, he accompanied
Dr. Emerson to Fort Snelling, in the territory north-west of the
River Mississippi. After marrying there a female slave, Harriet,
belonging also to Dr. Emerson, he, with his wife and children by
her, in 1838, accompanied Dr. Emerson back to the State of Missouri.
Meanwhile, on the decease of Dr. Emerson, Dred, as a part of his
estate, passed into the legal custody and control of Mr. J. F. A.
Sanford, as executor of Dr. Emerson's will, the residuary interest
under the will being in his widow, now the wife of Dr. Chaffee, Mem-
ber of Congress from Massachusetts, and in her minor daughter, the
child of Dr. Emerson.
In this condition of things, after some litigation in the courts of
the State of Missouri, Dred got into the Circuit Court of the United
States for the District of Missouri, in the form of a suit for trespass
against Mr. Sanford, under whose immediate direction he seems to
have been, at least for the purpose of the suit.
I have never understood why, in these circumstances, it needed two
j-ears' litigation to try the question whether Dred was a freed man or not.
It would seem that, if it were so clear that Dred Scott was of right
free, as to make it cause of reproach to any court to decide otherwise,
his master ought so to have said, voluntarily, and without putting
the courts and lawyers, to say nothing of Dred himself, to so much
trouble on the subject. If a good man has in his possession any
thing, whatever it is, land or freedom, which belongs to another good
man, there is no occasion for a lawsuit. In this point of view there
is some mj'stery behind the case. It looks like a fancy case, carried
on, if not got up, for the public edification and amusement. I do not
complain, if this be so, nor impute blame in any quarter; on the con-
trary, I think we have cause to be exceedingly grateful to all con-
cerned, courts, lawyers, parties, including Dred himself, for the
opportunity, which thus came up, to have so many important questions
finally adjudged, as they were, by the Supreme Court of the United
States.
In Dred's behalf, it was alleged that he and his family were free,
first, on the ground of residence on Rock Island, within the limits of
the ordinance of 1787, and secondly, of residence at Fort Snelling,
within the limits of the Missouri Compromise. On the other hand,
it was argued that Dred, being an African, was not a citizen of the
United States competent to sue as such in the Circuit Court ; that
his residence out of Missouri did not make him free, or, at any rate,
41
did not make liim free in ihe State of Missouri. The Circuit Court
so decided ; and thus a case was made for the Supreme Court.
After being twice deliberately argued in that court, it was decided,
by seven judges against two, and the decision pronounced by the
venerable and learned Chief Justice.
I say the case was decided. I know it has been contended in the
newspapers, and in some journals of a more elaborate chai'acter, and
by respectable members of the bar, that the decision is not a decis-
ion, that the arguments of the Chief Justice are unsatisfactory, and
that the Supreme Court of the United States was mistaken.
"With pardon of gentlemen who have come to such conclusions, let
me say. first, that the record shows that there was a decision, and that
the mandate of the Supreme Court has issued to the Circuit Court
accordingly, and that this mandate has been executed of course by the
Circuit Court. I speak to lawyers now, and I think they will, on
reflection, be inclined to admit that all that constitutes a decision.
In the second place, as to the arguments of the Chief Justice, a
magistrate in that office for now twenty years, before that Attorney-
General, and long ago at the head of one of the ablest bars of the United
States, — that of Maryland, — a man now more than eighty years of age,
infirm of bodj% but with a mind which seems to beam out the
clearer from its frail earthly shrine, as if it had already half shaken off
the dust of mortality and begun to stand as it were transfigured into
the celestial glory and beauty of immortality, — I say as to his argu-
ments, I think he might well speak to any one of his critics in the lan-
guage addressed by Chief Justice Marshall one day to a lawyer who
was reading to him out of Blackstone, — "■ Young gentleman, it may
be assumed, for the purpose of this argument, that the Chief Justice
of the United States has some knowledge of the common rudiments
of law." >
And as to the third point, of the Supreme Court being mistaken in /
the law, I respectfully suggest to my brethren of the bar, what is rather
a technical consideration, it is true, but is not the less important, that, \
in a matter of law fully before it, the Supreme Court cannot err ; that V
is impossible ; lawyers may err, inferior courts may err, but there is [
no writ of error to the Supreme Court ; that is impossible by the I
Constitution. What is decided by it is decided, beyond all human
power, except a change of opinion on its part. What it pronounces
law is law, as much as if written in an act of Congress ; nay, more,
it has constitutional power to annul any statute by pronouncing it
unconstitutional. It is the constitutional expositor of the Constitu-
tion, and its exposition becomes the sole admissible reading of the
Constitution, remediable, if wrong, only by amendment of the Con-
stitution. That is elementary. If it were otherwise, there would be
no law of the land, but only anarchy of opinion among disputing
lawyers, with the press to hallo them on, and cry stuhboij, until all
rights, whether of person or property, Avere scattered like chaff to the
wind, and no security left for any body but in the strong hand, the
sharp-edged sword, and the very convincing eloquence of the cannon.
I understand the argument to be this : because the court decided
that they had no jurisdiction of the points of the case, that therefore
42
the oi)inlon of the Chief Justice, who speaks expressly in the name of
the court, is ohiter dicimn only, that is, incidental remark, not legal
decision. Under favor, that is not so. If the conclusions of the
court be of the essence of the decision, then they are law. Here,
the question was, jurisdiction or not? Defendant's counsel said, the
court has no jurisdiction because the plaintiff is not, as the law re-
quires in order that he should bring an action of trespass in the Circuit
court, a citizen of the United States. So the court had to decide
the point of citizenship. But then, said plaintiff's counsel, the court
has jurisdiction, because, by living at Rock Island, within a part" of
the country from which the ordinance of 1787 excluded slavery, Dred
Scott became a freeman. And so the court had to decide this. And
then again, said the plaintiff's counsel, if not freed in Illinois, by the
ordinance of 1787, he was freed by living at Fo""rt Snelling, within
the scope of the Missouri Compromise. And so the court had to
decide that.
Now, as to the ordinance of 1787, the court, as we have seen, had
already disposed of that, by a series of decisions, one of them, that
of Strader rs. Graham, upon the very point, of the condition of a
slave, on his return to a slave labor State, from which he had passed
for a time into a free labor State north-west of the Ohio. And the
principle of that decision decided the new jjoint of the Missouri Com-
promise, which was the application of the ordinance of 1787 to new
territory, and which, like that, was void, because it restricted the
legislative power of the new State, and was in conflict with the con-
stitutional rule as to the perfect equality of all the States of the
Union.
As to the main point, whether Dred Scott was a free man in Mis-
souri or not, that, in so far as decided by the court, stood on the ground
that each State is the judge of the legal condition of its own inhabi-
tants, and thus neither has power to determine it in or for another
State. That is the doctrine of the jurists everywhere. Lord Stowell
so decided in the case of a slave ; and we find, in the published
writings of Mr. Justice Story, his letter accepting the decision of
Lord Stowell, and so, in effect, approving in advance the determina-
tion of the court as to Dred Scott.
Nothing remains, except the question whether the court decided
correctly, in deciding that Dred Scott was not a citizen of the United
States. A little calm consideration of the question will relieve U3 of
all doubts on that point.
At the time, when the Constitution of the United States was
formed, the future Union consisted of the thirteen British Colonies,
which had fought the battle of our national independence, and of the
vast unorganized territory, which, by compacts between the Colonies,
and by the treaty of peace, had become their common property.
Each of the thirteen Colonies or States was 'independent of the
others, except in so far as they were associated by sundry common
rights and interests, or by the imperfect political bonds of the Con-
federation. So emphatically true is this, that, in the early legislation
under the Constitution, North Carolina and Ilhode Island, which at
first"" refused to accept the Constitution, were treated as alien govcm-
43
ments. Ktiode Island, especially, — conscious of the fact, whicli the
Federal Government as M'ell as the early colonizers of the country
have strangely oxerlooked, that Xarragansett Bay is not merely
the best maritime harbor on the coast of North America, but the.
only faultless one, — conceived the idea of remaining out of the
Union, and thus enjoying to the full the unequalled commercial
capabilities of her marine position : the fallacy of which idea was
speedily demonstrated to her, by the enactment of acts of Congress
depriving her of participation in the commercial benefits of the
Union.
At that time, tlie question of citizenship was one internal to each
of the States, which respectively determined for themselves who
were citizens and who not. They did this, sometimes b)' gen-
eral laws, and sometimes by special ones ; for legislative acts, natu-
ralizing aliens, either bylndividuals or by glasses, are quite frequent
in the primitive history of the several States. Indeed, as we shall see
in the sequel, they may, even now, determine the question of citi-
zenship for themselves and within themselves ; but neither of them
has the power to determine it for other States or for the Union.
The inhabitants of the United States, at that time, consisted of
three distinct races, — one, native, the Indians, — and two, foreign, the
Africans and the Europeans. Of these three races, only one, the
Europeans, were the people of the United States. They, (the Euro-
peans), were the " people,"' who issued the Declaration of Indepen-
dence ; and they were the " people," Avho ordained and established
the Constitution of the United States. Neither the Indians, the
original occupants of the soil of the United States, — nor the Africans,
who like ourselves came hither from across the Atlantic, — were
people, citizens, or, in any sense or phrase of designation, parties,
either to the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution of the
United States. The men of European race, — the white men as dis-
tinguished from the red men and the black men, — constituted the
political society, of which they alone were coequal members, — while
the Indians and Africans were not citizens, but subjects.
That such was the relation of the three races, each to the other,
is indicated, not only by the nature of things, as above stated, but
also by pertinent acts of Congress ; of which it suffices to cite one,
the most emphatic and conclusive, namely, the act " to establish a
uniform rule of naturalization," that is, to determine in what way
al'ens may be converted into citizens of the United States. The
purview of this act is confined, in express terms, to free ivhilc per-
sons. And it is well settled, as law, that this power of naturalization,
under the Constitution, is vested exclusively in Congress.
It is perfectly clear, therefore, that a negro alien cannot by natural-
ization become a citizen of the United States. But it is argued that
negroes born in the United States are not aliens, and that they are
therefore citizens, — natural horn citizens, to use the language of the
Constitution. That argument is founded in manifest error, — the false
assumption that every person born in the country is a citizen of it.
This false assumption pervades all the reasoning of the Republican
presses and orators, Avho criticise the decision of the Supremj Court
44
in the case of Dred Scott. The legislature of New Hampshire has
pushed this error to its extremest point, by resolving, very solemnly
but very inconsiderately, that all persons born in the State are there-
fore citizens of the State. How false that is, can be seen at once by
considering the case of the Indians.
Certainly, the Indians in this country are natives enough, for they
are indeed the only " Native Americans," in the true sense of the
party language of the day But they are not born citizens of the
State in which they may happen to be born, nor are they born citizens
of the United States. That has been adjudicated again and again
by the courts of the several States, as well as by those of the United
States. They may be made citizens of the United States, not how-
ever, under the general naturalization laws, but either by treaty or by
special law. Thus, in the treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, there is a
stipulation, according to which the Choctaw Indians may, if they
please, be converted into citizens of the United States. So, by
an act of Congress, it is provided that, on a certain contingency, the
" Stockbridge tribe of Indians, and each and every one of them, shall
be deemed to be, and from that time declared to be, citizens of the
United States." These two examples prove that the Indians are not,
in constitutional right of birth, citizens of the United States.
The case of the Indians serves to dispose of another fallacy in the
criticisms of the decisions in the case of Dred Scott, — which is, the
erroneous idea, that, when a man is, by the constitution or law of any-
State, a citizen of that State, he is ipso facto a citizen of the United
States. That is not true. Thus, by the constitution of the State of
Wisconsin, certain Indians are made citizens, with express declara-
tion that they shall contiuue to be such, even although not citizens
of the United States.
The constitution of Wisconsin, as also that of Michigan, serves
to expose another kindred fallacy, namely, the idea that when, by
the law of any one of the States of the Union, a person is made a
citizen of that State, he thereupon becomes a citizen of each of the
other States. For the constitution of each of these States confers
the political rights of citizenship, (after a brief residence,) on all
white persons of foreign birth, who shall have declared their inten-
tion to become citizens of the United States. It would be quite
ridiculous to pretend that aliens of this class are entitled to the
rights of citizenship in Massachusetts.
Now, why should Africans, born in the United States, be entitled
to larger rights than Indians r They are not. Nothing but the per-
verse negrophilisni of the day could have imagined that they are.
And, but for the morbid state of the public mind on that subject,
there could not have been either surprise or anger to find the Su-
preme Court, when the case came before them, deciding this point in
obedience to well established constitutional doctrines, and in strict
accordance with the uniform theory and unbroken practice of the.
administrative departments of the Government of the United States.
For the rest, there has been the most pertinacious misrepresenta-
tion and perversion of the effect of the decision of the Supreme Court,
in so far as regards personal rights of the Africans. It is utterly
45
false to say that it deprives them of the power to defend their rights
of person or property by suit at law. They may not sue in certain
courts of the United States by virtue of citizenship. There are mul-
titudes of citizens of the United States who cannot do it. Such of
them as live in the Territories cannot, at least in the form here under
consideration. For the exercise of the right in question is limited to
such persons as are at the same time citizens of the United States and
also of some State. And, as to Africans, the courts of the State or
Territory, in which they reside, are open to them, just as they are to
the citizens of the United States.
Such, at the present time, is, beyond all controversy, the law.
And now comes the practical question : Is it worth while to neglect
the affairs of our State, in order to be unhappy about this point of
law ? To what end ? We cannot change it without amending the
Constitution. Can we expect that? Clearly not. To do that, we
must have either a vote of two-thirds of each House of Congress, or
a national convention called by the legislatures of two-thirds of the
States, and its amendments adopted by three-fourths of the States.
Can you? Plainly, not; for you not only have all the Southern
States against you, but a majority of the Northern States.
During this very year, and in voluntary approbation, as it were,
of the decision of the Supreme Court in Dred Scott's case, the Repub-
lican State of Iowa and the new State of Minnesota have delibe-
rately disfranchised Africans. Before that, the Topeka Convention,
representing the exclusive Republican party of Kansas, — and the party
itself, by separate vote on the very question, — had disfranchised
Africans and banished them from the proposed State.
So that here also is a perfectly useless, idle, impracticable agitation
as to a point of law, touching which we have no more power than we
have to change the laws of England, And we might as well make a
party issue here of the enfranchisement of persons of this class in
ancient Rome, as to do it in regard to the citizenship of Dred Scott.
I have said all, which it was my purpose to say, on this subject.
Before passing to another subject, let me say, that, among the most
painful exhibitions of perverted j udgment and deplorable party passion,
which it has ever been my lot to witness in our country, has been the
frantic vituperation, applied, in some quarters, to the Supreme Court
of the United States, and to its venerable, great and good Chief
Justice. The Supreme Court itself is entitled to our profound respect,
as well for the exalted character of its members, as for its own high
place in the institutions of the United States. The Chief Justice is
the very incarnation of judicial purity, integrity, science and wisdom.
Happy the land which has such magistrates in its high seats of jus-
tice, and sustained, not by an array of armed men to execute their
decrees, but by the veneration of their country for them, and the
respect of their countrymen for the Constitution !
I had intended to speak of another question of law, which, as it
now appears, is " somewhat involved " in the questions of the day,
namely, that which rather unseasonably, and quite superfluously, it
seems to me, troubles the good judgment of Mr. Chapman. With
much respect for him, personally and professionally, it is my right to
46
say, and my duty, that, in my opinion, he errs, both in his premises
and in the general conclusion, as well as many of the special conclu-
sions, which he deduces from these premises. I have trespassed on
your indulgence too long to venture to go into that technical argu-
ment now ; but am prepared to do it on proper occasion, in the belief
of being able to do it to the entire satisfaction of the people of Mas-
sachusetts.
I pray you, my friends, to rest perfectly assured, that neither in
that question of law, nor in either of the others, which have so
much moved the public mind, is there any concealed mystery, any
gunpowder-plot, any infernal machine, any thing, indeed, which need
impair your equanimity. All apprehensions on that score are but
idle phantasms of the imagination. Least of all is there any thing in
them, which tends to the extension of slavery, or the prejudice, any
other ways, of either the interests or the convictions of the Northern,
as distinguished from the Southern, States.
My friends, let us pause a moment at this point. We have at
length reached that sensitive subject, as to which there is so much
difference of sentiment among us, so much heated controversy, so
much passionate emotion. We all, it may be, have definite and
fixed opinions regarding it, which we do not expect to relinquish. I
have, as you well know. I am not that changeful person, which
some ill-wishers would have me be considered. Surrounding cir-
cumstances have changed with time more than I. Things have
changed, men have changed, the points of view, from Avhich we
regard one another's acts, have changed. I said, in 1833, when a
private citizen of the State, in an address to a public assembly in the
city of Boston, as to the anti-slavery agitators of Massachusetts,
that, in my judgment, " their influence is extremely and entirely
pernicious in the slaveholding States," and that "-their influence in
the free States is only less prejudicial than at the South." The
lapse of time has but served to confirm/ this conviction. I have
expressed it in Congress. I repeated the same belief, not many years
agone, here, in front of this Hall, on its dedication to the public
uses of the city of Newburyport. I think so now, when, at the expi-
ration of twenty-four years, almost the historic period of a generation
of mankind, with new faces before me mingled among the old and
familiar ones, the same questions return for consideration. Without
purpose or thought of saying a word on the subject, calculated to
alarm the sensibilities of any one, let me siiggest two or three ideas,
which are pertinent to the line of remark pursued this evening, and
which appear to me to give it practical application to the condition of
mind of the people of Massachusetts.
\ou, the men of this State, reprobate involuntary servitude, and
are desirous that it shall cease to exist anywhere in the world, and
especially in the United States. Be it so. Let us take up that sen-
timent, accept it as a fact, nay respect it as one, and reason it along
to a conclusion. .
You desire the abolition of servitude, especially in the Southern
States. But can you reach it there ? Have you any legal access to
it for the end of its abolition by law ? No, it is beyond your power ;
47
you cannot legislate, in this respect, for Carolina or Mississippi any
more than you can for Russia or Turkey. Will you, on account of it,
dissolve the Union? No, you have not a thought of that. You are
not members of what has been appropriately called the FooPs Con-
vention, now sitting somewhere in Ohio for the purpose of arranging
the dissolution of the Union. Will you break out hysterically into
revolution, and undertake to invade the South in arms, and thus to
set free its slave inhabitants ? Xo, you have no such impracticable
and- absvird thought. Will you abandon yourselves to mere bad
temper, ungovernable wrath, revilings and vituperation against all
your fellow citizens at the South, and a majority of your immediate
fellow citizens at the North? No, that would, you know, be a course
fruitful of no good, but of much evil, and one not consonant with
your sense of right and wrong, or your self-respect.
But we would at least, you say, separate ourselves from the xmclcan
thing ? Aye, but can you, or if you can, will you ? You can act
upon it in one way, not to any great result perhaps, but to some
result, in the way our Fathers preluded the War of Independence.
Are you disinterested enough to make thorough trial of that experi-
ment ? It is, to cease to buy from slave labor or to sell to it ; — to
cease to sustain it by nourishing it, and by nourishing yourselves
with it ; — to cease to build and sail ships for the transportation of its
products ; to cease to live by the manufacture of its products ; to
cease to wear its cotton, to eat its corn, its fruits, and its sugar, to
smoke its tobacco, to drink its coffee or cacao. When you have self-
denial enough to do that, then, and not until then, it seems to me,
you will be entitled to claim superiority of conscientiousness over
them, who do no more to keep slave labor in use than you do, and
who, associated in life with it inseparably, uphold it of necessity,
and not, like you, in the voluntary gratification of taste, caprice,
convenience, or appetite.
And, if you were able to attain that high eminence of disinterest-
edness and self-denial, what signal effect would it produce ? You
have the progress of events in France and England to bear witness.
It was in France that the negro-philist agitation had its beginning :
its first result there was the devastation of the rich Colony of St.
Domingo, and the reduction of that to its present state of tyrannic
barbarism and comparative desolation. Then, England took up the
policy of emancipation, to the first result, there, of the decay and
decline of her Colonies in the West Indies, and the augmented pros-
perity, in the same degree, of the Spanish Colonies and of Brazil.
Thereafter, slave labor did not cease to flourish, and to do so even
with the aid of France and England, by reason of their commercial
relations with the slaveholding countries of America.
The next series of acts, in the view of working out this great prob-
lem, was an elaborate attempt, on the part of England especially, to
substitute, in commerce and use, the products of free labor in the
place of those of slave labor. In the earnest effort to effect this
result, the government of England seemed, for a while, transferred
from the common sense statesmen of St. Stephen's to the visionary
schemers of Exeter Hall. And, now, that well-meant undertaking
I I
\
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
4;
has failed, — so utterly, that what ''""'"'" "il'iHI ill' il (III III ; for
more cotton, more sugar, more co 0 011 897 784 1 0 >t in
America can produce, France and England have betaken themselves
to coolie labor, as it is called, the transportation of Asiatics to Amer-
ica, to labor in a more cruel servitude than ever was imposed on
Africans. Nay, such is the revolution on this subject, that men seri-
ously discuss, in Great Britain, the expediency of going backward a
thousand years in the work of civilization, and converting the rebels
and prisoners of war of the East Indies into slaves to labor in the
West Indies.
Meanwhile, great cargoes of Asiatics are conveyed from the East
to the West, to be employed in colonial labor, under circumstances
of misery, for which the horrors of the old middle passage from
Africa afford no parallel ; and this by the two great commercial
nations of modern times, according to whose law slave-trade is piracy,
— Great Britain and the United States. Have we not all read of one
of these great ships, with her ship-load of unhappy coolies, destroyed
by themselves in mid- ocean, so they might thus escape by death from
the sufferings of the voyage and the terrors of their future condition ?
Horrid! Horrid ! Meseems, that the loud death-shriek of that mass
of our fellow-men — as, in the agony of their despair, self-immolated,
with fixed eyes and uplifted hands, they sink from our sight into the
boiling waters of the deep sea — rings sharply in the ear still, like
the long wail of an autumn wind through the trees of the forest,
like the multitudinous cry of a beleagured city in the hour of assault
and sack, like that of the sinful men of old as the rising surges of the
deluge swept over them on their last mountain-top of refuge from the
divine wrath. And, if the echo of that death-cry rises to heaven for
vengeance on the cupidity of our age, does it not also give utterance to
a low voice, at least, of remonstrance against the misdirected philan-
thropy of the age ? Of all the zealous efforts of so many good men
to proscribe slavery and the slave- trade, is it the consummation, that,
as Las Casas undertook to relieve the aboriginal Americans by the
transportation of Africans to America, so now the Africans in Amer-
ica shall be relieved by shifting the accumulated burden of slave
labor from them to the Asiatics ?
My friends, it is no easy task, you perceive, to reform the world,
to abolish ignorance, poverty, vice and crime. Let him, who is con-
fident of his virtue, look up some erring brother within reach,
and try the individual experiment. He will find it an arduous one.
How much more arduous, then, the task of changing the social con-
dition and the habits of nations and of whole races of mankind !
What, then, you may say, — shall we sit down in hopeless apathy,
without striving to do good? No, let us continue to strive to do
good, — but with humble distrust of our own wisdom, — temperately,
— charitably, — in the spirit of good-will towards all men, and ill-will
to none, — with no presumptuous confidence in our own strength, —
waiting hopefully but patiently on the good Providence of God.
.y
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